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ON THE MISERIES OF A MAN'S LIFE.

How few men in the world are prosperous! What an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of persecuted and oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth with groans, and heaven itself with weeping, prayers and sad remembrances! If we could, from one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread; how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat; if we could but hear how mariners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock or bulges under them; how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of constant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of so great evils and a constant calamity: let us remove from hence, at least, in affections and preparation of mind.

THE DAWN AND PROGRESS OF REASON.

Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by-and-by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his life.

WHAT IS LIFE?

It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have f seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as the

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lamb's fleece; but when the ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its sialk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves, and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you and me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave ? What friends to visit us? What officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals?

A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colors of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes, mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less. To my apprehension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenæus concerning Ninus the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these words: "Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, and other riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi, nor touched his god with the sacred rod according to the laws: he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor administered justice, nor spake to the people; nor numbered them; but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead, behold his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the oreath of a living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all my portion: the wealth with which I was blessed, my enemies meeting together shall carry away, as the mad Thyades carry a

raw goat. I am gone to hell: and when I went thither, I neither carried gold, nor horse, nor silver chariot. I, that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust." 1

ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1618-1667.

ABRAHAM COWLEY is the first, in order of time, of the list of English poets whose works were edited, and whose lives were written by Doctor Johnson. He was born in London in 1618. His father, who was a grocer by trade, died before his birth; but his mother succeeded in procuring his admission into Westminster School as a king's scholar, where he became distinguished for correct classical scholarship. He very early imbibed a taste for poetry— it is said from Spenser's Faerie Queene being thrown in his way; and in his sixteenth year he published a collection of verses under the appropriate title of Poetical Blossoms. In 1636 he was elected a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he continued to reside till 1643, when he removed to Oxford. From this time he took a very active part in the royal cause, and was employed on some missions of trust; and when, in the progress of the civil war, the queen was compelled to quit the kingdom, Cowley accompanied her to France, and was of material assistance to her, in managing the secret correspondence between herself and her royal consort.

In 1656 he returned to England, and soon after his arrival published an edition of his poems, containing most of those which now appear in his works. When the Restoration came, he naturally looked for some reward for his long services in the royal cause. But alas! "how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors." Cowley was destined to much bitter disappointment. At length he obtained the lease of a farm at Chertsey, by which his income was raised to about £300 a year. But he did not live long to enjoy his retirement; for, taking a severe cold and fever by exposure, he died on July 28, 1667.

At the time of his death, Cowley certainly ranked as the first poet in England, though the Comus of Milton and some of his exquisite minor poems had been published nearly thirty years before. But what could be expected of an age that was stamped with the licentiousness of such a court as that of Charles II.? Still, though Cowley has nothing of the reputation he once had, he has sufficient merit to give him a considerable rank among British poets. Dr. Johnson says, "It may be affirmed that he brought to his poetic labors a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gayety of the less; and that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty flights." His poetical works are divided into four parts" Miscellanies," "Love Verses," "Pindaric Oles," and the "Davidies, a heroical poem of the Troubles of David." Of all these his Anacreontics are the most natural and pleasing.2

1 "He who wrote in this manner also wore a mitre, and is now a heap of dust; but when the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered with reverence, genius will have become a mockery, and virtue an empty shade !"— Hazlitt.

2 The best edition of Cowley is that by Bishop Hurd, in three volumes: read also, Johnson's Life of Cowley in his "Lives of the British Poets."

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GOLD.

A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss,
But, of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but Love in vain.
Virtue now nor noble blood,
Nor wit, by love is understood.
Gold alone does passion move!
Gold monopolizes love!

A curse on her and on the man
Who this traffic first began!

A curse on him who found the ore!
A curse on him who digg'd the store
A curse on him who did refine it!
A curse on him who first did coin it!

A curse, all curses else above,

On him who used it first in love!
Gold begets in brethren hate;
Gold, in families, debate;
Gold does friendship separate;
Gold does civil wars create.
These the smallest harms of it;
Gold, alas! does love beget.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

Happy insect! what can be
In happiness compared to thee?
Fed with nourishment divine,
The dewy morning's gentle wine!
Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill;
'Tis fill'd wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self's thy Ganymede.

Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing,
Happier than the happiest king!
All the fields which thou dost see,

All the plants belong to thee;

All that summer hours produce,

Fertile made with early juice.

Man for thee does sow and plough;

Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Thou dost innocently joy;

Nor does thy luxury destroy.

The shepherd gladly heareth thee,

More harmonious than he.

Thee country hinds with gladness hear

Prophet of the ripen'd year!

Thee Phœbus loves, and does inspire;

Phœbus is himself thy sire.

To thee, of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect! happy thou,

Dost neither age nor winter know;

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The following are four stanzas of one of his best pieces, entitled

HYMN TO LIGHT.

Hail! active Nature's watchful life and health!

Her joy, her ornament, and wealth!

Hail to thy husband, Heat, and thee!

Thou the world's beauteous bride, the lusty bridegroom he!

Say, from what golden quivers of the sky

Do all thy winged arrows fly?

Swiftness and Power by birth are thine;

From thy great Sire they come, thy Sire, the Word Divine.

Thou in the moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,

Dost thy bright wood of stars survey,

And all the year dost with thee bring

Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring.

Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above

The Sun's gilt tent for ever move,

And still, as thou in pomp dost go,

The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.

Cowley's prose essays are much better than his poetry. Dr. Johnson, in speaking of them, says, "His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-labored; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness:" and Dr. Drake, one of the most judicious of modern critics, remarks, that "to Cowley we may justly ascribe the formation of a basis on which has since been constructed the present correct and admirable fabric of our language. His words are pure and well chosen, the collocation simple and perspicuous, and the members of his sentences distinct and harmonious."

ON MYSELF.

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to them

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