Page images
PDF
EPUB

W. DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 137

rule and dominion of himself, the affections being composed,. the actions so divided, is the perfection of our Government, that summum bonum in Philosophy, the bonum publicum in our policy, the true end and object of this Monarchy of

man.

W. DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN

TH

THE SPARKLES OF THE SOUL

HOUGH it hath been doubted if there be in the soul such imperious and superexcellent power, as that it can, by the vehement and earnest working of it, deliver knowledge to another without bodily organs, and by only conceptions and ideas produce real effects; yet it hath been ever, and of all, held, as infallible and most certain, that it often, (either by outward inspiration or some secret motion in itself) is augur of its own misfortunes, and hath shadows of approaching dangers presented unto it before they fall forth. Hence so many strange apparitions and signs, true visions, uncouth heaviness, and ceaseless languishings of which to seek a reason, unless from the sparklings of God in the soul, or from the God-like sparkles of the soul, were to make reason unreasonable, by reasoning of things transcending her reach.

Having, when I had given myself to rest in the quiet solitariness of the night, found often my imagination troubled with a confused fear, no, sorrow or horror, which, interrupting sleep, did astonish my senses, and rouse me, all appalled and transported, in a sudden agony and amazedness; of such an unaccustomed perturbation, not knowing, nor being able to dive into any apparent cause, carried away with the stream of my (then doubting) thoughts, I began to ascribe it to that secret foreknowledge and presaging power of the prophetic mind, and to interpret such an agony to be the spirit, as a

sudden faintness and universal weariness useth to be the body, a sign of following sickness; or, as winter lightnings, earthquakes and monsters prove to commonwealths and great cities, harbingers of wretched events and emblems of their hidden destinies.

Hereupon, not thinking it strange, if whatsoever is humane should befall me, knowing how Providence overcomes grief, and discountenances crosses; and that, as we should not despair in evils which may happen to us, we should not be too confident, nor lean much to those goods we enjoy; I began to turn over in my remembrance all that could afflict miserable mortality, and to forecast everything which could beget gloomy and sad apprehensions, and with a mask of horror shew itself to humane eyes: till in the end, as by unities and points mathematicians are brought to great numbers, and huge greatness, after many fantastical glances of the woes of mankind, and those incumbrances which follow upon life, I was brought to think, and with amazement, on the last of humane terrors, or (as one termed it) the last of all dreadful and terrible evils, Death.

For to easy censure it would appear, that the soul, if it can foresee that divorcement which it is to have from the body, should not without great reason be thus over-grieved, and plunged in inconsolable and unaccustom'd sorrow: considering their near union, long familiarity and love, with the great change, pain, and ugliness, which are apprehended to be the inseparable attendants of Death.

They had their being together, parts they are of one reasonable creature, the harming of the one, is the weakning of the working of the other. What sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses? They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight. If it be tedious to an excellent player on the lute, to abide but a few months the want of one, how much more the being without such noble tools and engines be painful to the soul? And if two pilgrims which have wandred some few miles together, have a heartsgrief when they are near to part, what must the sorrow be at

parting of two so loving friends and never-loathing lovers, as are the body and soul?

Death is the violent estranger of acquaintance, the eternal divorcer of marriage, the ravisher of the children from the parents, the stealer of parents from their children, the interrer of fame, the sole cause of forgetfulness, by which the living talk of those gone away as of so many shadows or age-worn stories: all strength by it is enfeebled, beauty turned into deformity and rottenness, honour into contempt, glory into baseness. It is the reasonless breaker off of all actions, by which we enjoy no more the sweet pleasures of earth, nor contemplate the stately revolutions of the heavens. The sun perpetually setteth, stars never rise unto us; it, in one moment, robbeth us of what with so great toil and care in many years we have heaped together: by this are successions of lineages cut short, kingdoms left heirless, and greatest states orphaned: it is not overcome by pride, soothed by flattery, tam'd by intreaties, brib'd by benefits, softened by lamentations, nor diverted by time. Wisdom, save this, can prevent and help everything. By death we are exiled from this fair city of the world, it is no more a world unto us, nor we any more a people unto it. The ruines of Phanes, palaces, and other magnificent frames, yield a sad prospect to the soul, and how should it without horror view the wrack of such a wonderful master-piece as is the body?

[ocr errors]

JOHN MILTON

THE SEARCH FOR LOST TRUTH

RUTH indeed came once into the world with her divine

TRU

Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his

conspirators how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred Saint.

IT

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

OF MUSIC

T is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is a musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain "the musick of the spheres": for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church-musick. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that tavern-musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear

discovers: it is a hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God,-such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined into rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse; and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter.

A DORMITIVE TO BEDWARD

But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoken so little, and the oneirocritical masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulness of that sense shakes hands with detectable odours; and though in the bed, of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose. Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order, and mystical mathematics of the city of heaven.

Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes open longer, were but to act our Antipodes.

« PreviousContinue »