we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in the purchase; and the person is snatched away, and the goods remain. And all this is the law and constitution of nature; it is a punishment to our sins, the unalterable event of providence, and the decree of heaven: the chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.

I have conversed with some men who rejoiced in the death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judgment upon them for being on the other side, and against them in the contention: but within the revolution of a few months, the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsome death: which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid; for I knew that it must be so with all men; for we also shall die,1 and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence.

1 Τεθναθι κηρα δεγω τοτε δεξομαι, οπποτε κεν δη Ζευς εθελη τελεσαι. -Hom. [Ibid, xxii, 365Į.

FRANCIS OSBORNE

STUDIES, ETC.

(From Advice to a Son, Part I)

7. Do NOT prosecute beyond a superficial knowledge any learning that moves upon no stronger legs than the tottering basis of conjecture is able to afford it; for though you may please yourself in your own conceit, it will not be so easy to satisfy others, the capacity of the ignorant lying as much below such speculations as the more knowing are above them, there remaining to all in things dubious a power to reject or admit what opinions they please. Therefore, no study is worth a man's whole employment that comes not accompanied with profit or such unanswerable reasons as are able to silence all future debate-not to be found out of the list of the mathematics, the queen of truth, that imposeth nothing upon her subjects but what she proves due to belief by infallible demonstration, the only knowledge that we can on earth gain likely to attend us to heaven. As for other human learning, so much of it as is not hewed out of this rock is nothing but lumber and forms, owned for the majesty and employment only of academies and of little better use than to find discourse by the fireside. Yet though it cannot be denied that number and measure were all the journeymen God had during his six days labor, my memory reacheth the time when the generality of people thought her most useful branches spells, and her professors limbs of the devil, converting the honor of Oxford, due

for her (though at that time slender) proficiency in this study, to her shame, not a few of our foolish gentry refusing to send their sons thither lest they should be smutted with the black art, a term found out by a no less dark ignorance, the only enemy to this angelical knowledge. Nor is this a prodigy in the circulation of time, as might easily be instanced did discretion allow the same liberty to the dissectors of the present ages as she doth for those past. Neither can you make application of any example better than of this to dissuade you from affording an immoderate proportion of benevolence or malignity in relation to anything others condemn or approve.

10. Be conversant in the speeches, declarations, and transactions occasioned by the late wars, out of which more natural and useful knowledge may be sucked than is ordinarily to be found in the mouldy records of antiquity.

When I consider with what contradiction reports arrived at us during our late civil wars, I can give the less encouragement to the reading of history-romances never acted being born purer from sophistication than actions reported to be done, by which posterity hereafter, no less than antiquity heretofore, is likely to be led into a false, or at best but a contingent belief. Cæsar, though in this happy, that he had a pen able to grave into neat language what his sword had first more roughly cut out, may in my judgment abuse his reader. For he that for the honor of his own wit doth make people speak better than can be supposed men so barbarously bred were able, may possibly report they fought worse than really they did. Of a like value are the orations of Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and most other historians, which doth not a little prejudice the truth of all the rest.

Were it worthy or capable to receive so much illumination from one never made welcome by it, I should tell the world, as I do you, there is as little reason to *believe men know certainly all they write, as to think they write all they imagine; and as this cannot be admitted without danger, so the other, though it may in shame be denied, is altogether as true.

11. A few books well studied and thoroughly digested nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth as ordinary students use. And of these choice must be had answerable to the profession you intend. For a statesman, French authors are best as most fruitful in negotiations, and memoirs left by public ministers, and by their secretaries published after their deaths; out of which you may be able to unfold the riddles of all states, none making more faithful reports of things done in all nations than ambassadors, who cannot want the best intelligence because the prince's pensioners unload in their bosoms all they can discover. And here, by way of prevention, let me inform you that some of our late ambassadors, which I could name, impaired our affairs by treating with foreign princes in the language of the place, by which they did not only descend below their master's dignity but their own discretion, betraying for want of words of gravity the intrinsic part of their employment and going beyond their commission oftener by concession than confining themselves within it or to it, the true rule for a minister of state, not hard to be gained by a resolute contest, which if made by an interpreter, he like a medium may intercept the shame of any impertinent speech which eagerness or indiscretion may let slip. Neither is it a small advantage to gain so much time for deliberation what is fit farther to urge, it being, besides, too much an

honoring of their tongue and undervaluing your own to profess yourself a master therein, especially since they scorn to learn yours. And to show this is not grounded on my single judgment, I have often been informed that the first and wisest Earl of Pembroke did return an answer to the Spanish Ambassador in Welsh, for which I have heard him highly commended.

14. Follow not the tedious practice of such as seek wisdom only in learning, not attainable but by experience and natural parts; much reading, like a too great repletion, stopping up through a concourse of divers, sometimes contrary, opinions, the access of a nearer, newer, and quicker invention of your own. And for quotations, they resemble sugar in wine, marring the natural taste of the liquor if it be good, if bad, that of itself, such patches rather making the rent seem greater by an interruption of the style than less, if not so neatly applied as to fall in without drawing. Nor is any thief in this kind sufferable who comes not off, like a Lacedemonian, without discovery.

RELIGION

(From Advice to a Son, Part I)

19. KEEP then your conscience tender, but not so raw as to wince and kick at all you understand not; nor let it baffle your wit out of the bounds of discretion as such do that suffer themselves to be moved by it. To prevent which, keep reason always in your eye, whose light ought never to be lost in any worldly action and but eclipsed in what relates to heaven, the tribunal of conscience being erected in our soul to detect our miscarriages, not to betray our well-being, and therefore subordinate not only to a superlative authority, but also our honest, safe, and wholesome