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This is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honorable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and, in their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

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Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new life which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, when, as we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence, "to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures," early and late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by statute! When a man hath been laboring the hardest labor in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons, as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valor enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her victorithose are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her Dower; give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.

ous;

ANDREW MARVELL. 1620-1678. (Manual, p. 205.)

140. THE NYMPH COMPLAINING FOR THE DEATH OF HER FAWN.

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I had not found him counterfeit,
One morning (I remember well),
Tied in this silver chain and bell,
Gave it to me: nay, and I know
What he said then: I'm sure I do.

Said he, "Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer."

But Sylvio soon had me beguiled.
This waxéd tame while he grew wild,
And, quite regardless of my smart,
Left me his fawn, but took his heart.
Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away

With this, and very well content
Could so my idle life have spent;
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot, and heart; and did invite
Me to its game; it seemed to bless
Itself in me.
How could I less
Than love it? O, I cannot be
Unkind t'a beast that loveth me.
Had it-lived long, I do not know
Whether it too might have done so

As Sylvio did; his gifts might be
Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
But I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was far more better than
The love of false and cruel man.

CHAPTER XII.

THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION.

141. SAMUEL BUTLER. 1612-1680. (Manual, pp. 207-212.)

FROM "HUDIBRAS."

HONOR.

Quoth he, "That honor's very squeamish,
That takes a basting for a blemish:

For what's more honorable than scars,
Or skin to tatters rent in wars?

Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by th' blow;
Some kicked, until they can feel whether
A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather;
And yet have met, after long running,

With some whom they have taught that cunning,
The furthest way about, t' o'ercome,

I' th' end does prove the nearest home.

By laws of learned duellists,

They that are bruised with wood, or fists,

And think one beating may for once
Suffice, are cowards and poltroons;
But if they dare engage t' a second,

They're stout and gallant fellows reckoned.
Th' old Romans freedom did bestow;
Our princes worship with a blow:
King Pyrrhus cured his splenetic

And testy courtiers with a kick.
The Negus, when some mighty lord
Or potentate's to be restored,
And pardoned for some great offence,
With which he's willing to dispense,
First has him laid upon his belly,
Then beaten back and side t' a jelly;
That done, he rises, humbly bows,
And gives thanks for the princely blows;
Departs not meanly } roud, and boasting

Of his magnificent rib-roasting.
The beaten soldier proves most manful,
That, like his sword, endures the anvil,
And justly's held more formidable,
The more his valor's malleable:
But he that fears a bastinado,

Will run away from his own shadow.

CALIGULA'S CAMPAIGN IN BRITAIN
So th' emperor Caligula,

That triumphed o'er the British sea,
Took crabs and oysters prisoners,
And lobsters, 'stead of cuirassiers;
Engaged his legions in fierce bustles,
With periwinkles, prawns, and muscles,
And led his troops with furious gallops,
To charge whole regiments of scallops;
Not like their ancient way of war,
To wait on his triumphal car;
But when he went to dine or sup,
More bravely ate his captives up,
And left all war, by his example,
Reduced to vict'ling of a camp well.

THE PROCESSION OF THE SKIMMINGTON

And now the cause of all their fear
By slow degrees approached so near,
They might distinguish different noise
Of horns, and pans, and dogs, and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub,
But when the sight appeared in view,
They found it was an antique show;
A triumph that, for pomp and state,
Did proudest Romans emulate:
For as the aldermen of Rome
Their foes at training overcome,
And not enlarging territory,
As some, mistaken, write in story,
Being mounted in their best array,
Upon a car, and who but they?
And followed with a world of tall lads,
That merry ditties trolled, and ballads,
Did ride with many a good-morrow,

Crying, Hey for our town, through the borough.

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