Was it for me to stem the torrent of a nation’s joys by a froward and unseasonable silence? Did not Horace, who fought at Philippi, do as much for Augustus? And should I, who had suffered for his cause, not embrace the goodness, and salute the returning fortunes, of so gracious, so accomplished a master? His majesty himself, as I truly say of him, in the poem you object to me,
did me the justice to understand my address after another manner. He, who had so often been forced by the necessities of his affairs to make compliances with the time, never resented it from me, a private man and a poet, that I had made some sacrifices of a like nature. All this might convince you of the great truth I meant to inculcate by this long recital, that not a sullen and inflexible Sincerity, but a fair and seasonable accommodation of one’s self, to the various exigencies of the times, is the golden virtue that ought to predominate in a man of life and business. All the rest, believe me, is the very cant of philosophy and unexperienced wisdom.
Wisdom—and must the sanctity of that name—
Hear me, Sir—no exclamations against the evidence of plain fact. I have a right to expect another conduct from him, who is grown grey in the studies of moral science.
You learned another lesson in the school of Falkland, Hyde, and Chillingworth.
Yes, one I was obliged to unlearn. But, since you remind me of that school, what was the effect of adhering pertinaciously to its false maxims? To what purpose were the lives of two of them prodigally thrown away; and the honour, the wisdom, the talents of the other, still left to languish in banishment29 and obscurity?
O! prophane not the glories of immortal, though successless virtue, with such reproaches.—Those adored names shall preach honour to future ages, and enthrone the majesty of virtue in the hearts of men, when wit and parts, and eloquence and poetry, have not a leaf of all their withered bays to recommend them.
Raptures and chimeras!——Rather judge of the sentiments of future ages, from the present. Where is the man, (I speak it without boasting,) that enjoys a fairer fame; who is better received in all places; who is more listened to in all companies; who reaps the fruits of a reasonable and practicable virtue in every return of honour, more unquestionably, than he whose life and principles your outrageous virtue leads you to undervalue so unworthily? And take it from me as an oracle, which long age and experience enable me to deliver with all assurance, “Whoever, in succeeding times, shall form himself on the plan here given shall meet with the safety, credit, applause, and, if he chuses, honour and fortune in the world, which may be promised indeed, but never will be obtained, by any other method.”
You have spoken. But hear me now, I conjure you, whilst a poor despised philosopher—
O! I have marked the emotion this discourse
of mine hath awakened in you. I have seen
your impatience: I have watched your eyes
when they sparkled defiance and contradiction
to my argument. But your warmth makes
you forget yourself. I gave a patient hearing
to all your eloquence could suggest in this
cause. I even favoured your zeal, and helped
to blow up your enthusiasm. The rest fell to
my turn; and besides, the evening, as you see,
shuts in upon us. Let us escape, at least,
from its dews, which, in this decline of the
year, they say, are not the most wholesome,
into a warm apartment within doors; and then
I shall not be averse, especially when you have
taken a few minutes to recollect yourself, to
debate with you what further remains upon
this argument30.
MY LORD,
The duty I owe your Lordship, as well as my friendship for Mr. Cowley, determined me to lose no time in executing the commission you was pleased to charge me with by Mr. D***. I went early the next morning to Barn Elms32; intending to pass the whole day with him, and to try if what I might be able to suggest on the occasion, together with the weight of your lordship’s advice, could not divert him from his strange project of Retirement. Your lordship, no doubt, as all his other friends, had observed his bias that way to be very strong; but who, that knew his great sense, could have thought of it its carrying him to so extravagant a resolution? For my own part, I suspected it so little, that, though he would often talk of retiring, and especially since your lordship’s favour to him33, I considered it only as the usual language of poets, which they take up one after another, and love to indulge in, as what they suppose becomes their family and profession. It could never come into my thoughts, that one, who knew the world so well as Mr. Cowley, and had lived so long in it, who had so fair hopes and so noble a patron, could seriously think of quitting the scene at his years, and all for so fantastic a purpose as that of growing old in the corner of a country village.
These, my lord, were my sentiments, when your friendly message alarmed me with the apprehension of there being more in the matter than I had suspected. Yet still I considered it only as a hasty thought, which a fit of the spleen, or of the muse it may be, had raised; and which the free remonstrance of a friend would easily disperse, or prevent at least from coming to any fixed and settled resolution. But how shall I express to your lordship the surprise I was in, to find that this resolution was not only taken, but rooted so deeply in him, that no arguments, nor even your lordship’s authority, could shake it? I have ever admired Mr. Cowley, as a man of the happiest temper and truest judgment; but, to say the least, there was something so particular, I had almost said perverse, in what he had to allege for himself on this occasion, that I cannot think I acquit myself to your lordship, without laying before you the whole of this extraordinary conversation; and, as far as my recollection will serve, in the very words in which it passed betwixt us.
I went, as I told your lordship, pretty early to Barn Elms; but my friend had gotten the start of me by some hours. He was busying himself with some improvements of his garden, and the fields that lie about his house. The whole circuit of his domain was not so large, but that I presently came up with him. “My dear friend,” said he, embracing me, but with a look of some reserve and disgust, “and is it you then I have the happiness to see, at length, in my new settlement? Though I fled hither from the rest of the world, I had no design to get out of the reach of my friends. And, to be plain with you, I took it a little amiss from one whose entire affection I had reckoned upon, that he should leave me to myself for these two whole months, without discovering an inclination, either from friendship or curiosity, to know how this retirement agreed with me. What could induce my best friend to use me so unkindly?”
Surely, said I, you forget the suddenness of your flight, and the secresy with which the resolution was taken. We supposed you gone only for a few days, to see to the management of your affairs; and could not dream of your rusticating thus long, at a time when the town and court are so busy; when the occasions of your friends and your own interests seemed to require your speedy return to us. However, continued I, it doth not displease me to find you so dissatisfied with this solitude. It looks as if the short experience, you have had of this recluse life, did not recommend it to you in the manner you expected. Retirement is a fine thing in imagination, and is apt to possess you poets with strange visions. But the charm is rarely lasting; and a short trial, I find, hath served to correct these fancies. You feel yourself born for society and the world, and, by your kind complaints of your friend, confess how unnatural it is to deny yourself the proper delights of a man, the delights of conversation.
Not so fast, interrupted he, if you please, in your conclusions about the nature of retirement. I never meant to give up my right in the affections of those few I call my friends. But what has this to do with the general purpose of retreating from the anxieties of business, the intrigues of policy, or the impertinencies of conversation? I have lived but too long in a ceaseless round of these follies. The best part of my time hath been spent sub dio. I have served in all weathers, and in all climates, but chiefly in the torrid zone of politics, where the passions of all men are on fire, and where such as have lived the longest, and are thought the happiest, are scarcely able to reconcile themselves to the sultry air of the place. But this warfare is now happily at an end. I have languished these many years for the shade. Thanks to my Lord St. Albans, and another noble lord you know of, I have now gained it. And it is not a small matter, I assure you, shall force me out of this shelter.
Nothing is easier, said I, than for you men of wit to throw a ridicule upon any thing. It is but applying a quaint figure, or a well-turned sentence, and the business is done. But indeed, my best friend, it gives me pain to find you not so much diverting as deceiving yourself with this unseasonable ingenuity. So long as these sallies of fancy were employed only to enliven conversation, or furnish matter for an ode or an epigram, all was very well. But now that you seem disposed to act upon them, you must excuse me if I take the matter a little more seriously. To deal plainly with you, I come to tell you my whole mind on this subject: and, to give what I have to say the greater consequence with you, I must not conceal from you, that I come commissioned by the excellent lord you honour so much, and have just now mentioned, to expostulate in the freest manner with you upon it.
We had continued walking all this time, and were now ascending a sort of natural terras. It led to a small thicket, in the entrance of which was a seat that commanded a pleasant view of the country and the river. Taking me up to it, “Well,” said he, “my good friend, since your purpose in coming hither is so kind, and my Lord St. Albans himself doth me the honour to think my private concerns deserving his particular notice, it becomes me to receive your message with respect, and to debate the matter, since you press it so home upon me, with all possible calmness. But let us, if you please, sit down here. You will find it the most agreeable spot I have to treat you with; and the shade we have about us will not, I suppose, at this hour, be unwelcome.”
And now, turning himself to me, “Let me hear from you, what there is in my retreat to this place, which a wise man can have reason to censure, or which may deserve the disallowance of a friend. I know you come prepared with every argument which men of the world have at any time employed against retirement; and I know your ability to give to each its full force. But look upon this scene before you, and tell me what inducements I can possibly have to quit it for any thing you can promise me in exchange? Is there in that vast labyrinth, you call the world, where so many thousands lose themselves in endless wanderings and perplexities, any corner where the mind can recollect itself so perfectly, where it can attend to its own business, and pursue its proper interests so conveniently, as in this quiet and sequestered spot? Here the passions subside; or, if they continue to agitate, do not however transport the mind with those feverish and vexatious fervours, which distract us in public life. This is the seat of virtue and of reason; here I can fashion my life by the precepts of duty and conscience; and here I have leisure to make acquaintance, that acquaintance which elsewhere is so rarely made, with the ways and works of God.
Think again, my friend. Doth not the genius of the place seize you? Do you not perceive a certain serenity steal in upon you? Doth not the aspect of things around you, the very stillness of this retreat, infuse a content and satisfaction which the world knows nothing of? Tell me, in a word, is there not something like enchantment about us? Do you not find your desires more composed, your purposes more pure, your thoughts more elevated, and more active, since your entrance into this scene?”
He was proceeding in this strain, with an air of perfect enthusiasm, when I broke in upon him with asking, “Whether this was what he called debating the matter calmly with me. Surely,” said I, “this is poetry, or something still more extravagant. You cannot think I come prepared to encounter you in this way. I own myself no match for you at these weapons: which indeed are too fine for my handling, and very unsuitable to my purpose if they were not. The point is not which of us can say the handsomest things, but the truest, on either side of the question. It is, as you said, plain argument, and not rhetorical flourishes, much less poetical raptures, that must decide the matter in debate. Not but a great deal might be said on my side, and, it may be, with more colour of truth, had I the command of an eloquence proper to set it off.
I might ask, in my turn, “Where is mighty charm that draws you to this inglorious solitude, from the duties of business and conversation, from the proper end and employment of man? How comes it to pass, that this stillness of a country landscape, this uninstructing, though agreeable enough, scene of fields and waters, should have greater beauty in your eye, than flourishing peopled towns, the scenes of industry and art, of public wealth and happiness? Is not the sublime countenance of man, so one of your acquaintance terms it, a more delightful object than any of these humble beauties that lie before us? And are not the human virtues, with all their train of lovely and beneficial effects in society, better worth contemplating, than the products of inanimate nature in the field or wood? Where should we seek for Reason, but in the minds of men tried and polished in the school of civil conversation? And where hath Virtue so much as a being out of the offices of social life? Look well into yourself, I might say: hath not indeed the proper genius of solitude affected you! Doth not I know not what of chagrin and discontent hang about you? Is there not a gloom upon your mind, which darkens your views of human nature, and damps those chearful thoughts and sprightly purposes, which friendship and society inspire?”
You see, Sir, were I but disposed, and as able as you are, to pursue this way of fancy and declamation, I might conjure up as many frightful forms in these retired walks, as you have delightful ones. And the enchantment in good hands would, I am persuaded, have more the appearance of reality. But this is not the way in which I take upon myself to contend with you. I would hear, if you please, what reasons, that deserve to be so called, could determine you to so strange, and, forgive me if at present I am forced to think it, so unreasonable a project, as that of devoting your health and years to this monastic retirement. I would lay before you the arguments, which, I presume, should move you to quit a hasty, perhaps an unweighted, resolution: so improper in itself, so alarming to all your friends, so injurious to your own interest, and, permit me to say, to the public. I would enforce all this with the mild persuasions of a friend; and with the wisdom, the authority of a great person, to whose opinion you owe a deference, and who deserves it too from the entire love and affection he bears you.”
My dearest friend, replied he, with an earnestness that awed, and a goodness that melted me, I am not to learn the affection which either you or my noble friend bear me. I have had too many proofs of it from both, to suffer me to doubt it. But why will you not allow me to judge of what is proper to constitute my own happiness? And why must I be denied the privilege of choosing for myself, in a matter where the different taste or humour of others makes them so unfit to prescribe to me? Yet I submit to these unequal terms; and if I cannot justify the choice I have made, even in the way of serious reason and argument, I promise to yield myself to your advice and authority. You have taken me perhaps a little unprepared and unfurnished for this conflict. I have not marshalled my forces in form, as you seem to have done; and it may be difficult, on the sudden, to methodize my thoughts in the manner you may possibly expect from me. But come, said he, I will do my best in this emergency. You will excuse the rapture which hurried me at setting out, beyond the bounds which your severer temper requires. The subject always fires me; and I find it difficult, in entering on this argument, to restrain those triumphant sallies, which had better have been reserved for the close of it.
Here he paused a little; and recollecting himself, “But first,” resumed he, “you will take notice, that I am not at all concerned in the general question, so much, and, I think, so vainly agitated, ”whether a life of retirement be preferable to one of action?” I am not, I assure you, for unpeopling our cities, and sending their industrious and useful inhabitants into woods and cloisters. I acknowledge and admire the improvements of arts, the conveniencies of society, the policies of government34. I have no thought so mad or so silly, as that of wishing to see the tribes of mankind disbanded, their interests and connexions dissolved, and themselves turned loose into a single and solitary existence. I would not even wish to see our courts deserted of their homagers, though I cannot but be of opinion, that an airing now and then at their country houses, and that not with the view of diverting, but recollecting themselves, would prove as useful to their sense and virtue, as to their estates. But all this, as I said, is so far from coming into the scheme of my serious wishes, that it does not so much as enter into my thoughts. Let wealth, and power, and pleasure, be as eagerly sought after, as they ever will be: let thousands or millions assemble in vast towns, for the sake of pursuing their several ends, as it may chance, of profit, vanity, or amusement: All this is nothing to me, who pretend not to determine for other men, but to vindicate my own choice of this retirement.
As much as I have been involved in the engagements of business, I have not lived thus long without looking frequently, and sometimes attentively into myself. I maintain, then, that to a person so moulded as I am; of the temper and turn of mind, which Nature hath given me; of the sort of talents, with which education or genius hath furnished me; and, lastly, of the circumstances, in which fortune hath placed me; I say, to a person so charactered and so situated, RETIREMENT is not only his choice, but his duty; is not only what his inclination leads him to, but his judgement. And upon these grounds, if you will, I venture to undertake my own apology to you.”
Your proposal, said I, is fair, and I can have no objection to close with you upon these terms; only you must take care, my friend, that you do not mistake or misrepresent your own talents or character; a miscarriage, which, allow me to say, is not very rare from the partialities which an indulged humour, too easily taken for nature, is apt to create in us.
Or what, replied he, if this humour, as you call it, be so rooted as to become a second nature? Can it, in the instance before us, be worth the pains of correcting?
I should think so, returned I, in your case. But let me first hear the judgement you form of yourself, before I trouble you with that which I and your other friends make of you.
I cannot but think, resumed he, that my situation at present must appear very ridiculous. I am forced into an apology for my own conduct, in a very nice affair, which it might become another, rather than myself, to make for me. In order to this, I am constrained to reveal to you the very secrets, that is, the foibles and weaknesses, of my own heart. I am to lay myself open and naked before you. This would be an unwelcome task to most men. But your friendship, and the confidence I have in your affection, prevail over all scruples. Hitherto your friend hath used the common privilege of wearing a disguise, of masking himself, as the poet makes his hero, in a cloud, which is of use to keep off the too near and curious inspection both of friends and enemies. But, at your bidding, it falls off, and you are now to see him in his just proportion and true features.
My best friend, proceeded he with an air of earnestness and recollection, it is now above forty years that I have lived in this world: and in all the rational part of that time there hath not, I believe, a single day passed without an ardent longing for such a retreat from it, as you see me at length blessed with. You have heard me repeat some verses, which were made by me so early as the age of thirteen, and in which that inclination is expressed as strongly, as in any thing I have ever said or written on that subject35. Hence you may guess the proper turn and bias of my nature; which began so soon, and hath continued thus long, to shew itself in the constant workings of that passion.
Even in my earliest years at school, you will hardly imagine how uneasy constraint of every kind was to me, and with what delight I broke away from the customary sports and pastimes of that age, to saunter the time away by myself, or with a companion, if I could meet with any such, of my own humour. The same inclination pursued me to college; where a private walk, with a book or friend, was beyond any amusement, which, in that sprightly season of life, I had any acquaintance with. It is with a fond indulgence my memory even now returns to these past pleasures. It was in those retired ramblings that a thousand charming perceptions and bright ideas would stream in upon me. The Muse was kindest in those hours: and, I know not how, Philosophy herself would oftner meet me amidst the willows of the Cam, than in the formal schools of science, within the walls of my college, or in my tutor’s chamber.
I understand, said I, the true secret of that matter. You had now contracted an intimacy with the poets, and others of the fanciful tribe. You was even admitted of their company; and it was but fit you should adopt their sentiments, and speak their language. Hence those day-dreams of shade and silence, and I know not what visions, which transport the minds of young men, on their entrance into these regions of Parnassus.
It should seem then, returned he, by your way of expressing it, as if you thought this passion for shade and silence was only pretended to on a principle of fashion; or, at most, was catched by the lovers of poetry from each other, in the way of sympathy, without nature’s having any hand at all in the production of it.
Something like that, I told him, was my real sentiment: and that these agreeable reveries of the old poets had done much hurt by being taken too seriously. Were Horace and Virgil, think you, as much in earnest as you appear to be, when they were crying out perpetually on their favourite theme of otium and secessus, “they, who lived and died in a court?”
I believe, said he, they were, and that the short accounts we have of their lives shew it, though a perfect dismission from the court was what they could not obtain, or had not the resolution to insist upon. But pray, upon your principles, that all this is but the enchantment of example or fashion, how came it to pass, that the first seducers of the family, the old poets themselves, had fallen into these notions? They were surely no pretenders. They could only write from the heart. And methinks it were more candid, as well as more reasonable, to account for this passion, which hath so constantly shewn itself in their successors, from the same reason. It is likely indeed, and so much I can readily allow, that the early reading of the poets might contribute something to confirm and strengthen my natural bias36.
But let the matter rest for the present. I would now go on with the detail of my own life and experience, so proper, as I think, to convince you that what I am pleading for is the result of nature.
I was saying how agreeably my youth passed in these reveries, if you will have it so, and especially inter sylvas academi:
You know the consequence. This civil turmoil drove me from the shelter of retirement into the heat and bustle of life; from those studies which, as you say, had enchanted my youth, into business and action of all sorts. I lived in the world: I conversed familiarly with the great. A change like this, one would suppose, were enough to undo the prejudices of education. But the very reverse happened. The further I engaged, and the longer I continued in this scene, the greater my impatience was of retiring from it.
But you will say, my old vice was nourished in me by living in the neighbourhood of books and letters37. I was yet in the fairy land of the Muses; and, under these circumstances, it was no wonder that neither arms nor business, nor a court, could prevent the mind from returning to its old bias. All this may be true. And yet, I think, if that court had contained many such persons as some I knew in it, neither the distractions of business on the one hand, nor the blandishments of the Muse on the other, could have disposed me to leave it. But there were few Lord Falklands—and unhappily my admiration of that nobleman’s worth and honour38 created an invincible aversion to the rest, who had little resemblance of his virtues.
I would not be thought, said I, to detract from so accomplished a character as that of the Lord Falkland; but surely there was something in his notions of honour—
Not a word, interrupted he eagerly, that may but seem to throw a shade on a virtue the brightest and purest that hath done honour to these later ages.—But I turn from a subject that interests me too much, and would lead me too far. Whatever attractions there might be in such a place, and in such friendships, the iniquity of the times soon forced me from them. Yet I had the less reason to complain, as my next removal was into the family of so beneficent a patron as the Lord Jermyn, and into the court of so accomplished a princess as the Queen Mother.
My residence, you know, was now for many years in France; a country, which piques itself on all the refinements of civility. Here the world was to appear to me in its fairest form, and, it was not doubted, would put on all its charms to wean me from the love of a studious retired life. I will not say I was disappointed in this expectation. All that the elegance of polished manners could contribute to make society attractive, was to be found in this new scene. My situation, besides, was such, that I came to have a sort of familiarity with greatness. Yet shall I confess my inmost sentiments of this splendid life to you? I found it empty, fallacious, and even disgusting. The outside indeed was fair. But to me, who had an opportunity of looking it through, nothing could be more deformed and hateful. All was ambition, intrigue, and falsehood. Every one intent on his own schemes, frequently wicked, always base and selfish. Great professions of honour, of friendship, and of duty; but all ending in low views and sordid practices. No truth, no sincerity: without which, conversation is but words; and the polish of manners, the idlest foppery.
Surely, interposed I, this picture must be overcharged. Frailties and imperfections, no doubt, there will be in all societies of men, especially where there is room for competition in their pursuits of honour and interest. But your idea of a court is that of a den of thieves, only better dressed, and more civilized.
That however, said he, is the idea under which truth obliges me to represent it. Believe me, I have been long enough acquainted with that country, to give you a pretty exact account of its inhabitants. Their sole business is to follow the humour of the prince, or of his favourite, to speak the current language, to serve the present turn, and to cozen one another. In short, their virtue is, civility; and their sense, cunning. You will guess now, continued he, how uneasy I must be in such company; I, who cannot lie, though it were to make a friend, or ruin an enemy; who have been taught to bear no respect to any but true wisdom; and, whether it be nature or education, could never endure (pardon the foolish boast) that hypocrisy should usurp the honours, and triumph in the spoils of virtue.
Nay further, my good friend, (for I must tell you all I know of myself, though it expose me ever so much to the charge of folly or even vanity) I was not born for courts and general conversation. Besides the unconquerable aversion I have to knaves and fools (though these last, but that they are commonly knaves too, I could bring myself to tolerate); besides this uncourtly humour, I have another of so odd a kind, that I almost want words to express myself intelligibly to you. It is a sort of capricious delicacy, which occasions a wide difference in my estimation of those characters, in which the world makes no distinction. It is not enough to make me converse with ease and pleasure with a man, that I see no notorious vices, or even observe some considerable virtues in him. His good qualities must have a certain grace, and even his sense must be of a certain turn, to give me a relish of his conversation.
I see you smile at this talk, and am aware how fantastic this squeamishness must appear to you. But it is with men and manners, as with the forms and aspects of natural things. A thousand objects recal ideas, and excite sensations in my mind, which seem to be not perceived, or not heeded, by other men. The look of a country, the very shading of a landskip, shall have a sensible effect on me, which they, who have as good eyes, appear to make no account of. It is just the same with the characters of men. I conceive a disgust at some, and a secret regard for others, whom many, I believe, would estimate just alike. And what is worse, a long and general conversation hath not been able to cure me of this foible. I question, said he, turning himself to me, but, if I was called upon to assign the reasons of that entire affection, which knits me to my best friend, they would be resolved at last into a something, which they, who love him perhaps as well, would have no idea of.
He said this in a way that disarmed me, or I had it in my mind to have rallied him on his doctrine of occult qualities and unintelligible forms. I therefore contented myself with saying, that I must not hear him go on at this strange rate; and asked him if it was possible he could suffer himself to be biassed, in an affair of this moment, by such whimsies?
Those whimsies, resumed he, had a real effect. But consider further, the endless impertinencies of conversation; the dissipation, and loss of time; the diversion of the mind from all that is truly useful or instructive, from what a reasonable man would or should delight in: add to these, the vexations of business; the slavery of dependence, the discourtesies of some, the grosser injuries of others; the danger, or the scorn, to which virtue is continually subject; in short, the knavery, or folly, or malevolence, of all around you; and tell me, if any thing but the unhappy times, and a sense of duty, could have detained a man of my temper and principles so long in a station of life so very uneasy and disgusting to me.
Nothing is easier, said I, than to exaggerate the inconveniencies of any situation. The world and the court have doubtless theirs. But you seem to forget one particular; that the unhappy times you speak of, and the state of the court, were an excuse for part of the disagreeable circumstances you have mentioned. The face of things is now altered. The storm is over. A calm has succeeded. And why should not you take the benefit of these halcyon days, in which so many others have found their ease, and even enjoyment?
These halcyon days, returned he, are not, alas! what unexperienced men are ready to represent them. The same vices, the same follies, prevail still, and are even multiplied and enflamed by prosperity. A suffering court, if any, might be expected to be the seedplot of virtues. But, to satisfy your scruples, I have even made a trial of these happier times. All I wished to myself from the happiest, was but such a return for my past services, as might enable me to retire with decency. Such a return I seem not to have merited. And I care not at this time of day to waste more of my precious time in deserving a better treatment.
Your day, said I, is not so far spent, as to require this hasty determination. Besides, if this be all, the world may be apt to censure your retreat, as the effect of chagrin and disappointment.
His colour rose, as I said this. The world, resumed he, will censure as it sees fit. I must have leave at length to judge for myself in what so essentially concerns my own happiness. Though if ever chagrin may be pleaded as a reason for retirement, perhaps nobody had ever a better right than I have to plead it. You know what hath happened of late, to give me a disgust to courts. You know the view I had in my late comedy39 and the grounds I had to expect that it would not be ill taken. But you know too the issue of that attempt. And should I, after this experience of courtly gratitude, go about to solicit their favours?
But, to let you see that I am swayed by better motives than those of chagrin, I shall not conceal from you what I am proud enough to think of my TALENTS, as well as temper.
There are but two sorts of men, pursued he, that should think of living in a court, however it be that we see animals of all sorts, clean and unclean, enter into it.
The one is of those strong and active spirits that are formed for business, whose ambition reconciles them to the bustle of life, and whose capacity fits them for the discharge of its functions. These, especially if of noble birth and good fortunes, are destined to fill the first offices in a state; and if, peradventure, they add virtue to their other parts and qualities, are the blessings of the age they live in. Some few such there have been in former times; and the present, it may be, is not wholly without them.
The OTHER sort, are what one may properly enough call, if the phrase were not somewhat uncourtly, the MOB OF COURTS; they, who have vanity or avarice without ambition, or ambition without talents. These, by assiduity, good luck, and the help of their vices (for they would scorn to earn advancement, if it were to be had, by any worthy practices), may in time succeed to the lower posts in a government; and together make up that showey, servile, selfish crowd, we dignify with the name of COURT.
Now, though I think too justly of myself to believe I am qualified to enter into the former of these lists, you may conclude, if you please, that I am too proud to brigue for an admission into the latter. I pretend not to great abilities of any kind; but let me presume a little in supposing, that I may have some too good to be thrown away on such company.
Here, my lord, the unusual freedom, and even indecency, of Mr. Cowley’s invective against courts, transported me so far, that I could not forbear turning upon him with some warmth. Surely, said I, my friend is much changed from what I always conceived of him. This heat of language, from one of your candour, surprises me equally with the injustice of it. It is so far from calm reasoning, that it wants but little, methinks, of downright railing. I believe, continued I, that I think more highly, that is, more justly, of Mr. Cowley in every respect, than he allows himself to do. Yet I see not that either his time, or his talents, would be misemployed in the services he so much undervalues. Permit me to say, your resentment hath carried you too far; and that you do not enough consider the friends you left at court, or the noble lord that wishes your return thither.
I do, said he hastily, consider both. But, with your leave, since I am forced to defend myself against an ignominious charge, I must do myself the right to assume what I think belongs to me. I repeat it; I have long thought my time lost in the poor amusements and vanities of the great world, and have felt an impatience to get into a quiet scene, where, slender as my talents are, I might employ them to better purpose.
And think not, proceeded he, that I am carried to this choice by any thing so frivolous as the idleness of a poetical fancy. Not but the Muse, which hath been the darling of my youth, may deserve to be the companion of my riper age. For I am far from renouncing an art, which, unprofitable as it hath ever been to me, is always entertaining: and when employed, as I mean it shall be, in other services than those by which a voluptuous court seems willing to disgrace it, I see not what there is in this amusement of poetry, for the severest censor of life and manners to take offence at. Yet still I intend it for an amusement. My serious occupations will be very different; such as you, my friend, cannot disapprove, and should encourage. But I have opened to you my intentions more than once, and need not give you the trouble at this time to hear me explain them.
You mean, interposed I, to apply yourself to natural and religious inquiries. Your design is commendable; and I would not dissuade you from it. But what should hinder your pursuing this design as well in society as in this solitude?
What, at COURT, returned he, where the only object, that all men are in quest of, is GAIN; and the only deity they acknowledge, FORTUNE? Or say that such idolatries did not prevail, there, how shall the mind be calm enough for so sublime inquiries? or where, but in this scene of genuine nature, is there an opportunity to indulge in them? Here, if any where, is the observation of the poet verified, DEUS EST QUODCUNQUE VIDES. Look round, my friend, on this florid earth, on the various classes of animals that inhabit, and the countless vegetable tribes that adorn it. Here is the proper school of wisdom,
Infinite are the uses, continued he, which would result from this method of applying experiment and observation to Natural Science. I have taken occasion, you know, to offer a slight sketch of them to the Public very lately41. But the principal I would draw from it to myself should be, to inure the mind to just conceptions of the divine nature; that so, with the better advantage, I might turn myself to the awful study of his Word. And here, my friend, I am sensible how much I may expect to be animated by your zeal, and enlightened by your instruction. In the mean time, I pretend to possess some qualities, which, if rightly applied, may not be unsuitable to so high an undertaking. I feel myself impelled by an eager curiosity: I have much patience, and some skill in making experiments. I may even be allowed to boast of a readiness in the learned languages; and am not without a tincture of such other studies, as the successful prosecution of PHYSICS, and still more of Divinity, requires. You may further impute to me, if you please, an ingenuous love of truth, and an ordinary degree of judgment to discern it.
These, concluded he, are the TALENTS, of which I spoke to you so proudly; and with the help of these (especially if you allow me one other, the power of communicating what I may chance to learn of natural or divine things), I might hope to render a better account of this solitude, than of any employments I could reasonably aspire to, in the world of men and of business.
He said this with an air of solemnity, which left me a little at a loss what to reply to him, when he relieved my perplexity by adding, “but, though there was nothing of all this in the case, and my zeal for promoting knowledge in this private way were as lightly to be accounted of, as that, which led me to propose the more extensive scheme I before mentioned, probably will be, yet what should draw me from this leisure of a learned retirement? For though I please myself with the prospect of doing some public service by my studies, yet need I blush to own, to my learned friend, the fondness I should still have for them, were they only to end in my own private enjoyment? Yes, let me open my whole soul to you. I have ever delighted in letters, and have even found them, what the world is well enough content they should be, their own reward. I doubt, if this language would be understood in all companies. And let others speak as they find. But to me the year would drag heavily, and life itself be no life, if it were not quickened by these ingenuous pleasures.”
Indeed, were it only for the very quiet and indolence of mind, which retirement promises, why should I be envied this calm in the decline of a troubled life? But let the Muse speak for me,