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. * * 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. I had not found him counterfeit, Said he, "Look how your huntsman here But Sylvio soon had me beguiled. With this, and very well content As Sylvio did; his gifts might be 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, For what's more honorable than scars, Some have been beaten till they know With some whom they have taught that cunning, 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 They're stout and gallant fellows reckoned. And testy courtiers with a kick. Of his magnificent rib-roasting. Will run away from his own shadow. CALIGULA'S CAMPAIGN IN BRITAIN That triumphed o'er the British sea, THE PROCESSION OF THE SKIMMINGTON And now the cause of all their fear Crying, Hey for our town, through the borough. |