But I answered him thus.—“It is easy, my good sir, and characteristic of human nature, to gird at the age in which one lives. Yet consider whether it may not be true that it is less the world’s peace that ruins noble nature than this war illimitable which holds our aspirations in its fist, and occupies our age with passions as with troops that utterly plunder and harry it. The love of money and the love of pleasure enslave us, or rather, as one may say, drown us body and soul in their depths. For vast and unchecked wealth marches with lust of pleasure for comrade, and when one opens the gate of house or city, the other at once enters and abides. And in time these two build nests in the hearts of men, and quickly rear a progeny only too legitimate: and the ruin within the man is gradually consummated as the sublimities of his soul wither away and fade, and in ecstatic contemplation of our mortal parts we omit to exalt, and come to neglect in nonchalance, that within us which is immortal.”
I had a friend once who, being in doubt with what picture to decorate the chimneypiece in his library, cast away choice and wrote up two Greek words—ΨΥΧΗΣ ἸΑΤΡΕΙΟΝ; that is, the hospital—the healing-place—of the soul.
Endnotes
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The reader will kindly turn back to the start of the chapter, and observe the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged against a system of English teaching which I believed to be thoroughly bad. That system has since given place to another, which I am prepared to defend as a better. ↩
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Do you remember, by the by, Samuel Rogers’s lines on Lady Jane Grey? They have always seemed to me very beautiful:
Like her most gentle, most unfortunate,
Crown’d but to die—who in her chamber sate
Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown,
And every ear and every heart was won,
And all in green array were chasing down the sun! -
The Odyssey, Book VI, lines 81–86. ↩
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The reference given is Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie, XIX 30 ff. ↩
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Why had he to swear this under pain of excommunication, when the lecturer could so easily keep a roll-call? But the amount of oathtaking in a medieval university was prodigious. Even college servants were put on oath for their duties: Gyps invited their own damnation, bed-makers kissed the book. Abroad, where examinations were held, the Examiner swore not to take a bribe, the Candidate neither to give one, nor, if unsuccessful, to take his vengeance on the Examiner with a knife or other sharp instrument. At New College, Oxford, the matriculating undergraduate was required to swear in particular not to dance in the College Chapel. ↩
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Donne’s “Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas Day, in the Evening.” 1624. ↩
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The Works of Lucian of Samosata: translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (Introduction, p. xxix). Oxford, Clarendon Press. ↩
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The Training of the Imagination: by James
Rhoades. London, John Lane, 1900. ↩ -
Landor: Æsop and Rhodopè. ↩
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Cornwall. —Editor ↩
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I borrow the verse and in part the prose of Professor W. Rhys Roberts’ translation. ↩
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It is fair to say that Myers cancelled the Damascus stanza in his final edition. ↩
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Charles Reade notes this in The Cloister and the Hearth, chapter LXI. ↩
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The loose and tautologous style of this Preface is worth noting. Likely enough Browne wrote it in a passion that deprived him of his habitual self-command. One phrase alone reveals the true Browne—that is, Browne true to himself: “and time that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. ↩
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Well! … my education is at last finished: indeed it would be strange, if, after five years’ hard application, anything were left incomplete. Happily that is all over now; and I have nothing to do, but to exercise my various accomplishments.
Let me see!—as to French, I am mistress of that, and speak it, if possible, with more fluency than English. Italian I can read with ease, and pronounce very well: as well at least, and better, than any of my friends; and that is all one need wish for in Italian. Music I have learned till I am perfectly sick of it. But … it will be delightful to play when we have company. I must still continue to practise a little;—the only thing, I think, that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my Italian songs! which everybody allows I sing with taste, and as it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly glad that I can.
My drawings are universally admired; especially the shells and flowers; which are beautiful, certainly; besides this, I have a decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments.
And then my dancing and waltzing! in which our master himself owned that he could take me no further! just the figure for it certainly; it would
