esteem of the inquisition of truth, as of an enterprise, and not as of a quality or ornament, and imploy wit and magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things vulgar, and of popular estimation.-(Two bookes of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, divine and humane.) : BEN JONSON, b. 1574, d. 1637. For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries; to reade the best authors; observe the best speakers; and much exercise of his owne style. In style to consider what ought to be written; and after what manner; hee must first thinke, and excogitate his matter; then choose his words, and examine the weight of either; then take care in placing and ranking both matter and words, that the composition be comely; and to doe this with diligence and often. No matter how slow the style be at first, so it be labour'd and accurate; seeke the best, and be not glad of the forward conceipts, or first words, that offer themselves to us; but judge of what wee invent, and order what wee approve. Repeat often what wee have formerly written; which, beside that it helpes the consequence, and makes the juncture better, it quickens the heate of imagination, that often cooles in the time of setting downe, and gives it new strength, as if it grew lustier by the going back as wee see in the contention of leaping, they jumpe farthest, that fetch their race largest ; or, as in throwing a dart or a iavelin, we force back our armes, to male our loose the stronger. Yet, if we have a faire gale of wind, I forbid not the steering out of our sayle, so the favour of the gale deceive us not. For all that wee invent doth please us in the conception or birth; else we would never set it downe. But the safest is to returne to our judgement, and handle over againe those things, the easinesse of which might make them justly suspected. So did the best writers in their beginnings; they impos'd upon themselves care and industry. They did nothing rashly. They obtain'd first to write well, and then custome made it easie, and a habit. By little and little, their matter shew'd it selfe to 'hem more plentifully; their words answer'd, their composition followed; and all, as in a well-order'd family, presented it selfe in the place. So that the summe of all is; ready writing makes not good writing; but good writing brings on ready writing; yet when wee thinke wee have got the faculty, it is even then good to resist it; as to give a horse a check sometimes with bit, which doth not so much stop his course, as stirre his mettle.(Discoveries.) THOMAS HOBBES, b. 1588, d. 1679. The causes of dreams (if they be natural) are the actions of violence of the inward parts of a man upon his brain, by which the passages of sense, by sleep benummed, are restored to their motion. The signs by which this appeareth to be so, are the differences of dreams (old men commonly dream oftener, and have their dreams more painful than young) proceeding from the different accidents of man's body; as dreams of lust, as dreams of anger, according as the heart, or other parts within, work more or less upon the brain, by more or less heat; so also the descents of different sorts of flegm maketh us a dream of different tastes of meats and drinks: and I believe there is a reciprocation of motion from the brain to the vital parts, and back from the vital parts to the brain; whereby not only imagination begetteth motion in those parts, but also motion in those parts begetteth imagination like to that by which it was begotten. If this be true, and that sad imaginations nourish the spleen, then we see also a cause, why a strong spleen reciprocally causeth fearful dreams, and why the effects of lasciviousness may in a dream produce the image of some person that had caused them. Another sign that dreams are caused by the action of the inward parts, is the disorder and casual consequence of one conception or image to another: for when we are waking, the antecedent thought or conception introduceth, and is cause of the consequent (as the water followeth a man's finger upon a dry and level table) but in dreams there is commonly no coherence (and when there is, it is by chance) which must needs proceed from this, that the brain in dreams is not restored to its motion in every part alike; whereby it cometh to pass, that our thoughts appear like the stars between the flying clouds, not in the order [in] which a man would chuse to observe them, but as the uncertain flight of broken clouds permits.—(Humane Nature; or the Fundamental Elements of Policy.) WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH, b. 1602, d. 1644. Points of doctrine (as all other things) are as they are, and not as they are esteemed: neither can a necessarie point bee made unnecessarie by being so accounted, nor an unnecessarie point bee made necessarie by being overvalued. But as the ancient philosophers (whose different opinions about the soule of man you may read in Aristotle de Anima, and Cicero's Tusculan Questions) notwithstanding their divers opinions touching the nature of the soule, yet all of them had soules, and soules of the same nature: or as those physitians who dispute whether the braine or heart be the principall part of man, yet all of them have braines and have hearts, and herein agree sufficiently; so likewise, though some Protestants esteeme that doctrine the soule of the church, which others doe not so highly value, yet this hinders not but that which is indeed the soule of the church may bee in both sorts of them; and though one account that a necessarie truth which others account neither necessarie nor perhaps true, yet this notwithstanding, in those truths which are truly and really necessarie they may all agree. For no argument can be more sophistical than this; They differ in some points which they esteeme necessarie; therefore they differ in some that indeed and in truth are so. Now as concerning the other inference, that they cannot agree what points are fundamentall: I have said and prov'd formerly that there is no such necessitie as you imagine or pretend, that men should certainly know what is, and what is not fundamentall. They that beleeve all things plainly delivered in Scripture, beleeve all things fundamentall, and are at sufficient unitie in matters of faith, though they cannot precisely and exactly distinguish between what is fundamentall and what is profitable; nay, though by errour they mistake some vaine, or perhaps some hurtfull opinions for necessarie and fundamentall truths. Besides, I have shewed above, that as Protestants do not agree (for you over-reach in. saying they cannot) touching what points are fundamentall; so neither do you agree what points are defin'd and so to be accounted, and what are not; nay, nor concerning the subject in which God hath placed this pretended authoritie of defining; some of you setling it in the pope himself, though alone without a councell, others in a councell, though divided from the pope: others only in the conjunction of councell and pope; others not in this neither, but in the acceptation of the present church universall; lastly, others not attributing it to this neither, but only to the perpetuall succession of the church of all ages of which divided company it is very evident and undeniable, that every former may be and are obliged to hold many things defin'd and therefore necessarie, which the latter, according to their owne grounds, have no obligation to doe, nay, cannot doe so upon any firme and sure and infallible foundation.-(The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation.) SIR THOMAS BROWNE, b. 1605, d. 1682. As there were many reformers, so likewise many reformations; every country proceeding in a particular way and method, according as their national interest, together with their constitution and clime, inclined them; some angrily, and with extremity; others calmly, and with mediocrity, not rending but easily dividing the community, and leaving an honest possibility of a reconciliation; which though peaceable spirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time, and the mercies of God may affect, yet that judgment that shall consider the present antipathies between the two extreams, their contrarieties in condition affection, and opinion, may with the same hopes expect an union in the poles of heaven. * * * I could never divide my self from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me that, from which within a few days I should dissent my self. I have no genius to disputes in religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness of my patronage: where we desire to be informed, 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves: but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in our selves an esteem, and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity: many, from the ignorance of these maximes, and an inconsiderate zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth: a man, may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazzard her on a battle.-(Religio Medici). EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON, But 1 must here take leave a little longer to discontinue this narration and if the celebrating the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and transmitting their great virtues, for the imitation of posterity, be one of the principal ends and duties of history, it will not be thought impertinent, in this place, to remember a loss which no time will suffer to be forgotten, and no success or good fortune could repair. In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous, and execrable to all posterity. 零 * He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts, in any man; and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expence, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolv'd to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And therefore having once resolv'd not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians. In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in him by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant of any thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation.-(The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England.) JOHN MILTON, b. 1608, d. 1674. When a city shall be as it were besieg'd and blockt about, her navigable river infested, inrodes and incursions round, defiance and battell oft rumour'd to be marching up ev'n to her walls, and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly tak'n up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reform'd, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, ev'n to a rarity and admiration, things not before discourst or writt'n of, argues first a singular good will, contentednesse, and confidence in your prudent foresight, and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives it self to a gallant bravery, and well grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us, as his was who, when Rome was nigh besieg'd by Hanibal, being in the city, bought that peece of ground, at no cheap rate, whereon Hanibal himself encampt his own regiment. Next it is a lively and cherfull presage of our happy successe and victory. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rationall faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and suttlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so when the cheerfulnesse of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversie and new invention, it betok'ns us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the old and wrincl'd skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entring the glorious waies of truth and prosperous vertue, destin'd to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the P |