The Seat of God's Glory. Nothing is there to come and nothing past The Davideis. David's Love for Saul's Daughter. Awake, awake my lyre! And tell thy silent master's humble tale, Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire; And I so lowly be, Tell her such different notes make all thy harmony! Hark! how the strings awake! And, though the moving hand approach not near, A kind of numerous trembling make: Now all thy forces try, Now all thy charms apply, Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye. Ibid. 114. Sir Richard Lovelace, 1618-1658. (Handbook, par. 148.) To Althea from Prison. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage Minds innocent and quiet, take That for an hermitage: If I have freedom in my love, Cowley is fond of illustrations from Scripture. His principle is that all the books of the Bible are either already Out of four stanzas most admirable and exalted pieces of poesie or are the best materials for it." 115. Joseph Beaumont, D.D., 1615-1699. (Handbook, par. 171.) Bad Times. Why slander we the times? Have days and years that we It's not the times are bad, but man. The times prove good, be thou Two stanzas out of three. Original Poems, Camb. 1749, p. 48. Content. Divine Content! O could the world resent, Delicious name; and at How low a rate Thou might'st be bought; no trade would driven be To purchase any wealth, but only Thee! Vicissitude. Vicissitude, how doth thy constant change Ib., p. 56 Cheer up the World which else would droop and faint. For thy Chamæleon's skin is made to fit All things at first were Night; then Day burst forth, And suffered Light, her full twelve Houres to reign; Of interwoven checker'd Night and Day. Psyche; or, Love's Mysterie, 1648. Canto xiv., stanzas 1 and 3. 116. Andrew Marvel, 1620-1678. (Hundbook, par. 169.) Is characterised as a prose-writer chiefly by his wit-excelling as he does in all its varieties, sarcasm, broad humour, and in light or grave raillery. His style is very different from the long involved sentences of his friend Milton, though without the ease and naturalness of Addison. From the king down to the tradesman,' Burnet says, 'his books were read with great pleasure;' and both the laughers and the friends of freedom were on his side. Character of Parker. This gentleman, as I have heard, after he had read Don Quixote and the Bible, besides such school-books as were necessary for his age, was sent early to the university; and there studied hard, and in a short time became a competent rhetorician and no ill disputant. He had learned how to erect a thesis, and to defend it pro and con with a serviceable distinction. . . And so thinking himself now ripe and qualified for the greatest undertakings and highest fortune, he therefore exchanged the narrowness of the university for the town, but coming out of the confinement of the square cap and the quadrangle into the open air, the world began to turn round with him, which he imagined, though it were only his own giddiness, to be nothing less than the quadrature of the circle. This accident occurring so happily to increase the good opinion which he naturally had of himself, he thenceforward applied to gain a like reputation with others. He followed the town life, haunted the best companies; and to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays with much care, and more proficiency than most of the auditory. But all this while he forget not the main chance; but hearing of a vacancy with a nobleman, he clapped in, and easily obtained to be his chaplain : from that day you may take the date of his preferments and his ruin; for having soon wrought himself dextrously into his patron's favour, by short graces and sermons, and a mimical way of drolling upon the Puritans, which he knew would take both at chapel and at table, he gained a great authority likewise with the domestics. They all listened to him as an oracle; and they allowed him, by common consent, to have not only all the divinity, but more wit too than all the rest of the family put together. Rehearsal Transprosed, i., p. 62. His lines on the Emigrants in the Bermudas are full of tenderness. Where the remote Bermudas ride, • What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery And in these rocks for us did frame O let our voice his praise exalt "Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which thence perhaps rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexique bay.' Thus sang they in the English boat With falling oars they kept the time. 117. Algernon Sidney, 1621-1684. (Handbook, var. 338.) Executed in 1684. His execution shocked public feeling at the time, and his works contain few opinions which an Englishman would now shrink from upholding.' Influence of Government on the Character of a People. Men are valiant and industrious when they fight for themselves and their country. They prove excellent in all the arts of war and peace, when they are bred up in virtuous exercises, and taught by their fathers and masters to rejoice in the honours gained by them. They love their country when the good of every particular man is comprehended in the public prosperity, and the success of their achievements is improved to the general advantage. They undertake hazards and labour for the government, when it is justly administered; when innocence is safe, and virtue honoured; when no man is distinguished from the vulgar, but such as have distinguished themselves by the bravery of their actions; when no honour is thought too great for those who do it eminently, unless it be such as cannot be communicated to others of equal merit. They do not spare their persons, purses, or friends, when the public powers are employed for the public benefit, and imprint the like affections in their children from their infancy. The discipline of obedience, in which the Romans were bred, taught them to command: and few were admitted to the magistracies of inferior rank, till they had given such proofs of their virtue as might deserve the supreme. Cincinnatus, Camillus, Papirius, T Fabius Maximus, were not made dictators that they might learn the duties of the office, but because they were judged to be of such wisdom, valour, integrity, and experience, that they might be safely trusted with the highest powers; and, whilst the law reigned, not one was advanced to that honour who did not fully answer what was expected from him. By these means the city was so replenished with men fit for the greatest employments, that even in its infancy, when three hundred and six of the Fabii were killed in one day, the city did lament the loss, but was not so weakened to give any advantage to their enemies: and when every one of those who had been eminent before the second Punic war, Fabius Maximus only excepted, had perished in it, others arose in their places, who surpassed them in number, and were equal to them in virtue. The city was a perpetual spring of such men, as long as liberty lasted; but that was no sooner overthrown, than virtue was torn up by the roots: the people became base and sordid; the small remains of the nobility slothful and effeminate; and, their Italian associates becoming like to them, the empire, whilst it stood, was only sustained by the strength of foreigners. The Grecian virtue had the same fate, and expired with liberty. It is absurd to impute this to the change of times; for time changes nothing: and nothing was changed in those times, but the government, and that changed all things. This is not accidental, but according to the rules given to nature by God, imposing upon all things a necessity of perpetually following their causes. Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear. As a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desires and vanity will abound in those that will foment them. Discourses concerning Government. Cap. ii. sec. 28. 118. David Clarkson, 1622-1686. (Handbook, par. 382, 384.) Fellow and tutor of Clare Hall, Rector of Mortlake, and afterwards colleague and successor of Dr. Owen in London. His sermons are of great though unequal value; and his Practical Divinity of the Papists displays great candour and research. |