These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish my fate;

But boldly say each night,

To-morrow let my sun his beams display,

Or in clouds hide them-I have lived to-day.

"You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved these characters in me: they were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, still grows proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there: for I remember when I began to read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet.

"With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the University; but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the Court of one of the best princesses of the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French Courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw clearly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with, when, for

aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewilder or entice me, when I saw that it was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm although I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it: a storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honorable trust, though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect:

"Well, then, I now do plainly see,

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.

"And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his Majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretenses, have arrived to extraordinary fortune: but I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself; and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it:

"Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,

Nor at the exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar.
Content thyself with the small barren praise,

Which neglected verse doth raise.

"However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on. I cast myself into it a corps perdu without making capitulations, or taking counsel of Fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, Take thy ease. I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoilt the happiness of an emperor, as well as mine. Yet do I neither repent nor alter my course non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum, nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now

at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her.

"Nor by me e'er shall you,

You, of all names, the sweetest and the best,
You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest;
You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be,
As long as life itself forsakes not me."

The same vein runs through the charming Essay "Of Obscu rity."

***"The pleasantest condition of life is in incognito. What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying, or being envied, from receiving or paying all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together in places where they are by nobody known, nor know any body. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage. Venus herself,

"A vail of thickened air around them cast,

That none might know or see them as they passed."

"The common story of Demosthenes' confession, that he had taken a great pleasure in hearing of a basket-woman say, as he passed: This is that Demosthenes,' is wonderful ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation, to vanity (if it were any); but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place till I get (as it were) out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good-fortune and commodity of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus; after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those qualifications of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet, within a few years afterward, there

were no two names of men more known, or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance, and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinence, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I can not comprehend the honor that lies in that. Whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best orator, and the hangman more than the Lord Chief Justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be anywise extraordinary. It was as often said, This is that Bucephalus, or, This is that Incitatus, when they were led prancing through the streets, as, This is that Alexander, or, This is that Domitian; and truly for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honorable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.

"I love and commend a true, good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue; not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as is the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was painful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man while he lives. What it is to him after his death, I can not say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbors that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in his exit); this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well?'"

We find another graceful bit of autobiography in an Essay addressed to Evelyn, and called "The Garden :"

"I never had any other desire so strong and so like to covet

ousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and study of nature;

"And there (with no design beyond my wall), whole and entire to lie, In no unactive ease and no unglorious poverty;

or, as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might there

"Studiis florere ignobilis oti.'

“(Although I could wish that he had rather said, 'nobilis oti, when he spoke of his own). But several accidents of my ill-fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still of that felicity; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all business, and almost company, yet I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish; and without that pleasantest work of human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am not yet arrived at my little Zoar. O let me escape thither (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live. I do not look back yet, but I have been forced to stop and make too many halts. You may wonder, Sir (for this seems a little too extravagant and pindarical for prose), what I mean by all this preface; it is to let you know that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavors well rewarded by something that I have met with, by the bye, which is, that they have procured to me some part in your kindness and esteem."

Here is a fine passage from the Essay "Of Solitude :"

** 66

Happy had it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learned by Scipio from the highest prosperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colorably and wittily said by Monsieur de Montaigne, 'That ambition itself might teach us to love solitude; there is nothing that does so much hate to have companions.' It is true it loves to have its elbows free; it detests to have company on