consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvesthome. Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! and worse upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of great. Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration. Only some cause like unto that which is now scattering the mental fog of the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can justify us in drawing the sword abroad. Sidney. And only the accomplishment of our purpose can permit us again to sheathe it: for, the aggrandisement of our neighbour is nought of detriment to us; on the contrary, if we are honest and industrious, his wealth is ours. We have nothing to dread while our laws are equitable and our impositions light; but children fly from mothers who strip and scourge them. have never been more tired with any reading than with dissertations upon happiness, which seems not only to elude inquiry, but to cast unmerciful loads of clay and sand and husks and stubble along the high road of the inquirer. Theologians and moralists, and even sound philosophers, talk mostly in a drawling and dreaming way about it. He who said that virtue alone is happiness, would have spoken more truly in saying that virtue alone is misery, if alone means singly; for, beyond a doubt, the virtuous man meets with more opposites and opponents than any other, meets with more whose interests and views thwart his, and whose animosities are excited against him, not only by the phantom of interest, but by envy. Virtue alone cannot rebuff them; nor can the virtuous man, if only virtuous, live under them, I will not say contentedly and happily, I will say, at all. Self-esteem, we hear, is the gift of virtue, the golden bough at which the gates of Elysium fly open but, alas! it is oftener, I am afraid, the Brooke. Across the hearse where homebred Law lies dead portion of the strong-minded, and even of the Strides Despotism, and seems a bloated boy, vain, than of the virtuous. By the constant Who, while some coarse clown drives him, thinks he exertion of our best energies, we can keep down drives, Shouting, with blear bluff face, give way, give way! We are come to an age when we ought to read and speak plainly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be set in a corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging down motionless, and our pockets turned inside-out. Sidney. Let us congratulate our country on her freedom from debt, and on the economy and disinterestedness of her administrators; men altogether of eminent worth, afraid of nothing but of deviating from the broad and beaten path of illustrious ancestors, and propagating her glory in far-distant countries, not by the loquacity of mountebanks or the audacity of buffoons, nor by covering a tarnished sword-knot with a trim shoulder-knot, but by the mission of right learned, grave, and eloquent embassadors. Triumphantly and disdainfully may you point to others. While the young blossom starts to light, Who dreads the future storm? To swell their pride, to quench their ire, And sterner forms arise; Faith in their presence veiled her head, And Hope beyond the skies. But away, away with politics: let not this citystench infect our fresh country-air. Brooke. To happiness then, and unhappiness too, since we can discourse upon it without emotion. I know not, Philip, how it is, but certainly I many of the thorns along the path of life; yet some will thwart us, whether we carry our book with us or walk without it, whether we cast our eyes on earth or on heaven. He who hath given the best definition of most things, hath given but an imperfect one here, informing us that a happy life is one without impediment to virtue.* A happy life is not made up of negatives. Exemption from one thing is not possession of another. Had I been among his hearers, and could have uttered my sentiments in the presence of so mighty a master, I would have told him that the definition is still unfound, like the thing. A sound mind and sound body, which many think all-sufficient, are but receptacles for it. Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite. One kind of it suits one man, another kind another. The elevated mind takes in and breathes out again that which would be uncongenial to the baser, and the baser draws life and enjoyment from that which would be putridity to the loftier. Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content. In fact, hardly anything which we receive for truth, is really and entirely so, let it appear as plain as it may, and let its appeal be not only to the understanding, but to the senses; for our words do not follow them exactly; and it is by words we receive truth and express it. I do not wonder that in the cloud of opinions and of passions (for where there are many of * Aristoteles says in his Ethics, and repeats it in his Polity, sidaipova Bíov sivas tòv zat àget»r àniμsódiotov. the one, there are usually some of the other) the clearer view of this subject should be intercepted: rather is it to be marvelled at, that no plain reasoning creature should in his privacy have argued thus: : complaining. I have indeed heard the soldier of our enemy scream at receiving a wound; I never heard ours. Shall the uneducated be worthy of setting an example to the lettered? If we see, as we have seen, young persons of some "I am without the things which do not promise, yet in comparison to us as the colt is to render those who possess them happier than I the courser, raised to trust and eminence by a am but I have those the absence of which powerful advocate, is it not enough to feel ourwould render me unhappy; and therefore the selves the stronger men, without exposing our having of them should, if my heart is a sound limbs to the passenger, and begging him in proof one and my reason unperverted, render me con- to handle our muscles? Those who distribute tent and blest! I have a house and garden of offices, are sometimes glad to have the excuse of my own; I have competence; I have children. merit; but never give them for it. Only one Take away any of these, and I should be sorrow-subject of sorrow, none of complaint, in respect ful, I know not how long: give me any of those to court, is just and reasonable; namely, to be which are sought for with more avidity, and I doubt whether I should be happier twenty-four hours. He who has very much of his own, always has a project in readiness for somewhat of another's: he who has very little, has not even the ground on which to lay it. Thus one sharp angle of wickedness and disquietude is broken off from him." Sidney. Since we have entered into no contest or competition, which of us shall sing or sermonize the other fast asleep, and since we rather throw out than collect ideas on the subject of our conversation, do not accuse me of levity, I am certain you will not of irreligion, if I venture to say that comforts and advantages, in this life, appear at first sight to be distributed by some airy fantastic Beings, such as figure in the stories of the East. These generally choose a humpback slave or inconsiderate girl to protect and countenance in like manner do we observe the illinformed mind and instable character most immediately under the smiles of Fortune and the guidance of Prosperity; who, as the case is with lovers, are ardent and attached in proportion as they alight upon indifference and inconstancy. Brooke. Yes, Happiness doats on her works and is prodigal to her favourite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities. This course is marked by the vulgar with nearly the same expression as I have employed upon it: men say habitually a run of luck. And I wish that misfortunes bore no resemblance to it in their march and tendency; but these also swarm and cluster and hang one from another, until at last some hard day deadens all sense in them, and terminates their existence. Sidney. It must be acknowledged, our unhappiness appears to be more often sought by us, and pursued more steadily, than our happiness. What courtier on the one side, what man of genius on the other, has not complained of unworthiness preferred to worth? Who prefers it? his friend? no: himself? no surely. Why then grieve at folly or injustice in those who have no concern in him, and in whom he has no concern? We are indignant at the sufferings of those who bear bravely and undeservedly; but a single cry from them breaks the charm that bound them to us. The English character stands high above rejected or overlooked when our exertions or experience might benefit our country. Forbidden to unite our glory with hers, let us cherish it at home the more fondly for its disappointment, and give her reason to say afterward, she could have wished the union. He who complains deserves what he complains of. Religions, languages, races of men, rise up, flourish, decay; and just in the order I assign to them. O my friend! is it nothing to think that this hand of mine, over which an insect is creeping, and upon which another more loathsome one ere long will pasture, may hold forth to my fellow men, by resolution of heart in me and perseverance, those things which shall outlive the least perishable in the whole dominion of mortality? Creatures, of whom the best and weightiest part are the feathers in their caps, and of whom the lightest are their words and actions, curl their whiskers and their lips in scorn upon similar meditations. Let us indulge in them; they are neither weak nor idle, having been suckled by Wisdom and taught to walk by Virtue. We have never thrown away the keepsakes that Nature has given us, nor bartered them for toys easily broken in the public paths of life. Brooke. Argue then no longer about courts and discontents: I would rather hear a few more verses; for a small draught increases the thirst of the thirsty. Sidney. To write as the ancients have written, without borrowing a thought or expression from them, is the most difficult thing we can achieve in poetry. I attempt no composition which I foresee will occupy more than an hour or two, so that I can hardly claim any rank among the poets; yet having once collected, in my curiosity, all the Incocations to Sleep, ancient and modern, I fancied it possible to compose one very differently; which, if you consider the simplicity of the subject and the number of those who have treated it, may appear no easy matter. Sleep! who contractest the waste realms of Night, Silent and welcome as the blessed shade Have dropt into the deep. Brooke. If I cannot compliment you, as I lately complimented a poet on the same subject, by saying, May all the gods and goddesses be as propitious to your Invocation, let me at least congratulate you that everything here is fiction. Sidney. There are sensible men who would call me to an account for attempting to keep up with the ancients, and then running downhill among the moderns, and more especially for expatiating in the regions of Romance. The fastidious and rigid call it bad taste: and I am afraid they have Truth for their prompter. But this, I begin to suspect, is rather from my deficiency of power and judgment, than because the thing in itself is wrong. Chivalry in the beginning was often intemperate and inhumane: afterward the term became synonymous with valorous courtesy. Writers, and the Public after them, now turn it into ridicule. But there is surely an incentive to noble actions in the deference we bear toward our ladies; and to carry it in my bosom is worth to me all the applauses I could ever receive from my prince. If the beloved keep us from them farther than arm's length for years together, much indeed we regret that our happiness is deferred, but more that theirs is. For pride, and what is better than pride, our pure conscience tells us, that God would bestow on us the glory of creating it; of all terrestrial glory far the greatest. Brooke. To those whose person and manners, and exalted genius, render them always and everywhere acceptable, it is pleasing to argue in this fashion. Sidney. Greville! Greville! it is better to suffer than to lose the power of suffering. The perception of beauty, grace, and virtue, is not granted to all alike. There are more who are contented in an ignoble union on the flat beaten earth before us, than there are who, equally disregarding both unfavourable and favourable clamours, make for themselves room to stand on an elevated and sharp-pointed summit, and thence to watch the motions and scintillations, and occasional overcloudings, of some bright distant star. Is it nothing to have been taught, apart from the vulgar, those graceful submissions which afford us a legitimate pride when we render them to the worthy? Is there no privilege in electing our own sovran? no pleasure in bending heart and soul before her? I will never believe that age itself can arrest so vivid an emotion, or that his deathbed is hard or uneasy, who can bring before it even the empty image he has long (though in vain) adored. That life has not been spent idly which has been mainly spent in conciliating the generous affections, by such studies and pursuits as best furnish the mind for their reception. How many, who have abandoned for public life the studies of philosophy and poetry, may be compared to brooks and rivers, which in the beginning of their course have assuaged our thirst, and have invited us to tranquillity by their bright resemblance of it, and which afterward partake the nature of that vast body whereinto they run, its dreariness, its bitterness, its foam, its storms, its everlasting noise and commotion! I have known several such; and when I have innocently smiled at them, their countenances seemed to say, "I wish I could despise you: but alas! I am a runaway slave, and from the best of mistresses to the worst of masters; I serve at a tavern where every hour is dinner-time, and pick a bone upon a silver dish." And what is acquired by the more fortunate among them? they may put on a robe and use a designation which I have no right to my cook and footman may do the same: one has a white apron, the other has red hose; I should be quite as much laughed at if I assumed them. A sense of inferior ability is painful this I feel most at home: I could not do nearly so well what my domestics do; what the others do I could do better. My blushes are not at the superiority I have given myself, but at the comparison I must go through to give it. Two poets cannot walk or sit together easily while they have any poetry about them: they must turn it out upon the table or the grass or the rock or the road-side. I shall call on you presently; take all I have in the meanwhile. At last thou goest, breezy March! The birds that shun our winters, fly: With hearted spearhead glossy-green? Regardless what her cheer hath been? Love frown, and drive me from his court. Brooke. Considering the chances and changes of humanity, I wish I were as certain that Pleasure will never pass you by, as I am that the Graces will never look on you ungraciously. Sidney. So little am I ashamed of the hours I spend in poetry, even a consciousness that the poetry itself is bad never leads me to think the occupation is. Foliage, herbage, pebbles, may put in motion the finer parts of the mind; and although the first things it throws off be verses, and indifferent ones, we are not to despise the cultivator of them, but to consider him as possessing the garden of innocence, at which the great body of mankind looks only through the gate. In the corner formed by the court-wall, sheltered and sunny, I found, earlier in the season than usual, a little rose-bud, which perhaps owed its existence to my cutting the plant in summer, when it began to intrude on the path, and had wetted the legs of the ladies with the rain it held. None but trifling poetry could be made out of this, yet other than trifling pleasure was. Brooke. Philip, I can give you only spoiled flowers for unspoiled and unopened ones: will you accept them? Sidney. Gladly. Brooke. On what occasion and for whom my verses were composed, you may at once discover. Deem it enough for me to premise in elucidation, that women have no favour or mercy for the silence their charms impose on us. Little are they aware of the devotion we are offering to them, in that state whereinto the true lover is ever prone to fall, and which appears to them inattention, indifference, or moroseness. We must chirp before them eternally, or they will not moisten our beaks in our cages. They like praise best, we thanksgiving. Sidney. Unfold the paper. What are you smiling at? Brooke. The names of the speakers. I call one "Poet," the other "Lady." How questionably the former! how truly the latter! But judge. Poet. Thus do you sit and break the flow'rs By all I see. And soon laid by! Poet. Lady, I come not here to teach, Many frail leaves shall yet lie pull'd, Sidney. Let me hope that here is only A volant shadow, just enough to break The sleeping sunbeam of soft idleness. Brooke. When a woman hath ceased to be quite the same to us, it matters little how different she becomes. Sidney. Hush! I will hear from you no sentiment but your own, and this can never be yours. Variations there are of temperature in the finest season; and the truest heart has not always the to be pardoned, we might appear to be more persame pulsations. If we had nothing to pardon or fect than we are, but we should in fact be less so. grieves and forgives. Whatever there may be Self-love is ungenerous and unforgiving; love Lying hid under those leaves and blossoms, shall rest there until our evening walk; we having always chosen the calmest hours of the most beautiful days for our discourses on love and religion. Something of emotion, I can not doubt, arose in your breast as you were writing these simple lines; yet I am certain it was sweet and solacing. Imagination should always be the confident, for she is always the calmer, of Passion, where Wisdom and Virtue have an equally free admittance. Let us now dismiss until evening comes (which is much the best time for them) all these disquisitions, and let us talk about absent friends. Brooke. We must sit up late if I am to tell you of all yours. Sidney. While the weather is so temperate and genial, and while I can be out-of-doors, I care not how late I tarry among Night airs that make tree-shadows walk, and sheep Washed white in the cold moonshine on grey cliffs. Our last excess of this nature was nearer the sea, where, when our conversation paused awhile in the stillness of midnight, we heard the distant waves break heavily. Their sound, you remarked, was such as you could imagine the sound of a giant might be, who, coming back from travel unto some smooth and level and still and solitary place, with all his armour and all his spoils about him, casts himself slumberously down to rest. KING HENRY IV. AND Sarage. I obey the commands of my liege. Henry. Tis well: thou appearest more civil and courteous, Sir Arnold Savage, than this morning in another place, when thou declaredst unto me, as speaker of the Commons, that no subsidy should be granted me until every cause of public grievance were removed.* SIR ARNOLD SAVAGE. Savage. I am now in the house of the greatest man upon earth; I was then in the house of the greatest nation. Henry. Marry! thou speakest rightly upon both points; but the latter, I swear unto thee, pleaseth me most. And now, Savage, I do tell thee with like frankness, I had well-nigh sent a The words reported by Hakewell, De modo tenendi score of halberts among your worshipful knights Parliamentum. and sleek wool-staplers, for was sore chafed; and, the best and most necessary things in the world to batter down your enemy's walls with. if another had dealt with me in such wise, I should have straightway followed my inclination. Thou knowest I am grievously let and hindered in my Henry. What may they be? you must find them. projected war, by such obstinacy and undutiful- Sarage. Sir, you have found them, and must ness in my people. I raised up the House of keep them they are the hearts of your subCommons four years ago, and placed it in opposi-jects. Your horse will not gallop far without tion to my barons, with trust and confidence that, by the blessing of Christ and his saints, I might be less hampered in my complete conquest of France. This is monstrous: Parliament speaks too plainly and steps too stoutly for a creature of four years growth. Savage. God forbid that any king of England should achieve the conquest of all France. Patience, my liege and lord! Our Norman ancestors, the most warlike people on whose banners the morning sun ever lighted, have wrested the sceptre from her swaddling kings, and, pushing them back on their cushions and cupboards, have been contented with the seizure of their best and largest province. The possession of more serfs would have tempted them to sit down in idleness, and no piece of unbroken turf would have been left for the play-ground of their children in arms. William the Conqueror, the most puissant of knights and the wisest of statesmen, thought fit to set open a new career, lest the pride of his chivalry should be troublesome to him at home. He led them forth against the brave and good Harold, whose armies had bled profusely in their war against the Scot. Pity that such blood as the Saxon should ever have been spilt!* but hence are the titledeeds to our lands and tenements, the perpetuity of our power and dominion. Henry. To preserve them from jeopardy, I must have silver in store; I must have horses and armour, and wherewith to satisfy the cravings of the soldier, always sharp, and sharpest of all after fighting. Savage. My liege must also have other things, which escaped his recollection. Henry. Store of hides, and of the creatures that were within them; store of bacon; store of oats and barley, of rye and good wheaten corn; hemp, shipping, masts, anchors; pinetree and its pitch from the Norwegian, yewtree from Corse and Dalmat. Divers other commodities must be procured from the ruler of the Adriatic, from him who never was infant nor stripling, whom God took by the right-hand and taught to walk by himself the first hour. Moreover I must have instruments of mine own device, weighty, and exceeding costly; such as machinery for beating down walls. Nothing of these have escaped my knowledge or memory, but the recital of some befits a butler or sutler or armourer, better than a king. Savage. And yet methinks, sir, there are others which you might have mentioned and have not, the recital of which would befit a king, rather than sutler, butler, or armourer: they are indeed The Danes under Harold were not numerous, and there were few vestiges of the Britons out of Wales and them, though you empty into his manger all the garners of Surrey. Wars are requisite, to diminish the power of your Barons, by keeping them long and widely separate from the main body of retainers, and under the ken of a stern and steady prince, watching their movements, curbing their discourses, and inuring them to regular and sharp discipline. In general they are the worthless exalted by the weak, and dangerous from wealth ill acquired and worse expended. The whole people is a good king's household; quiet and orderly when well treated, and ever in readiness to defend him against the malice of the disappointed, the perfidy of the ungrateful, and the usurpation of the familiar. Act in such guise, most glorious Henry, that the king may say my people, and the people may say our king: I then will promise you more, passing any computation, than I refused you this morning; the enjoyment of a blessing, to which the conquest of France in comparison is as a broken flagstaff... self-approbation in government and security in power. A Norman by descent, and an Englishman by birth and inheritance, the humiliation of France is requisite to my sense even of quiet enjoyment. Nevertheless I can not delude my understanding, on which is impressed this truth, namely, that the condition of a people which hath made many conquests, doth ultimately become worse than that of the conquered. For, the conquered have no longer to endure the sufferings of weakness or the struggles of strength; and some advantages are usually holden forth to keep them peaceable and contented: but under a conquering prince the people are shadows, which lessen and lessen as he mounts in glory, until at last they become, if I may reasonably say it and unreprovedly, a thing of nothing, a shapeless form. It is my office and my duty to provide that this evil, in the present day, do not befall us; and that our late descendants, with the same incitements to bravery, the same materials and means of greatness, may deserve as well of your family, my liege, as we have deserved of you. Henry. Faith! I could find it in my heart, Sir Arnold, to clip thine eagle's claws and perch thee somewhere in the peerage. Savage. Measureless is the distance between my liege and me; but I occupy the second rank among men now living, forasmuch as, under the guidance of Almighty God, the most discreet and courageous have appointed me, unworthy as I am, to be the great comprehensive symbol of the English people. Writers differ on the first appointment of Speaker in the House of Commons, for want rather of reflection than of inquiry. The Saxons had frequently such chiefs; not always, nor regularly. In the reign of William Rufus |