hath wisely divided the acts thereof into many branches, The night is come, like to the day, And with as active vigour run O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever. There is a monumental edition of the works by Simon Wilkin (4 vols. 1835-36), reprinted incompletely in 3 vols. in 1852; Dr Greenhill's scholarly edition of the Religio Medici appeared in 1881, and that by him and Marshall of the Hydriotaphia and Cyrus's Garden in 1896. See Pater's Appreciations (1889). Thomas Fuller was the son of the rector of Aldwinkle St Peter's in Northamptonshire (as Dryden was son of the rector of Aldwinkle All Saints). He was born in 1608. Quick intelligence made him a scholar in boyhood, and at Queen's College, Cambridge, he attained the highest honours. Eminently popular as a preacher in Cambridge, he passed through a rapid succession of promotions to the lectureship of the Savoy in London. His first work was a tedious poem (1631) — David's Hainous Sinne, Heartie Repentance, Heavie Punishment. In 1640 he published his History of the Holy Warre, on the Crusades, and in 1642 his Holy and Prophane State. During the Civil War he attached himself to the king's party at Oxford, and accompanied the army for some years as chaplain to Sir Ralph Hopton. For his men, apparently, he wrote and published Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645); Better Thoughts in Worse Times (1647) was followed by The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience (1647), and in 1660 by Mixt Contemplations in Better Times. A Pisgah-View of Palestine appeared in 1650. His company was much courted both for his learning and for his irrepressible humour. He would sit patiently for hours listening to the prattle of old women, in order to obtain snatches of local history, traditionary anecdote, and proverbial wisdom; and these he wrought up in The Worthies of England, which is a strange melange of topography, biography, and popular antiquities. In 1647 he returned to London. His Church History of Britain was given to the world in 1656 (1 vol. folio); and Heylyn denounced it as a rhapsody with three hundred and fifty errors, and full of impertinencies and scraps of trencherjests interlaced in all parts of the book.' Fuller next devoted himself to the preparation of his Worthies, which was not completed till 1660, nor published till after his death in 1661. He had passed through various situations in the Church, the last of which was that of chaplain to Charles II. By Charles II. he was restored to his preferments, and it was thought he would have been made a bishop had he not been prematurely cut off by fever the year after the Restoration. He was twice married. As proofs of his wonderful memory, it was fabled that he could repeat five hundred unconnected words after twice hearing them, and recite the whole of the signs in the principal thoroughfare of London after once passing through it and back again. His chief work, the Worthies, is rather a collection of brief memoranda than a regular composition. While a modern reader marvels at the vast quantity of gossip which it contains, he realises that it has preserved much curious information which would have otherwise been lost. It may be described as a magnificent miscellany about the counties of England and their illustrious natives, lightened up by unrivalled wit and felicity of illustration, and aglow with patriotism. The style, as in his other works, shows a nervous brevity and point almost new to English, and a homely directness strangely shrewd and never vulgar. The eminent men whose lives he records are arranged by Fuller according to their native counties, of which he mentions also the natural productions, manufactures, medicinal waters, herbs, wonders, buildings, local proverbs, sheriffs, and modern battles. Fuller's Holy and Prophane State contains admirably drawn characters, which are held forth as examples to be respectively imitated and avoidedsuch as the Good Father, the Good Soldier, the Good Master, and so on. In this and the other productions of Fuller there is a vast fund of sagacity and good sense; his conceits, as Charles Lamb says, are oftentimes 'deeply steeped in human feeling and passion.' Thus he says: 'The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders;' and negroes he characterises as 'the image of God cut in ebony.' And as smelling 'a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body, no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.' The first six extracts are from the Holy State, the next five from the Worthies. The Good Schoolmaster. There is scarce any profession in the commonwealth more necessary which is so slightly performed. The reasons whereof I conceive to be these: First, young scholars make this calling their refuge; yea perchance before they have taken any degree in the university, commence schoolmasters in the country; as if nothing else were required to set up this profession but only a rod and a ferula. Secondly, others who are able use it only as a passage to better preferment, to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they can provide a new one and betake themselves to some more gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their best with the miserable reward which in some places they receive, being masters to their children and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being grown rich they grow negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the proxy of an usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves himself. His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. Some men had as lieve be school boys as schoolmasters, to be tied to the school as Cooper's Dictionary and Scapula's Lexicon are chained to the desk therein; and though great scholars and skilful in other arts, are bunglers in this. But God of his goodness hath fitted several men for several callings, that the necessity of church and state in all conditions may be provided for. So that he who beholds the fabric thereof may say, God hewed out the stone, and appointed it to lie in this very place, for it would fit none other so well, and here it doth most excellent. And thus God mouldeth some for a schoolmaster's life; undertaking it with desire and delight, and discharging it with dexterity and happy He studieth his scholars' natures as carefully as they their books, and ranks their dispositions into several forms. And though it may seem difficult for him in a great school to descend to all particulars, yet experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar of boys' natures, and reduce them all, saving some few exceptions, to these general rules: 1. Those that are ingenious and industrious. The conjunction of two such planets in a youth presage much good unto him. To such a lad a frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death; yea, where their master whips them once, shame whips them all the week after. Such natures he useth with all gentleness. 2. Those that are ingenious and idle. These think with the hare in the fable, that running with snails (so they count the rest of their schoolfellows) they shall come soon enough to the post, though sleeping a good while before their starting. O! a good rod would finely take them napping! 3. Those that are dull and diligent. Wines, the stronger they be, the more lees they have when they are Many boys are muddy-headed till they be clarified with age; and such afterwards prove the best. Bristol new. diamonds are both bright, and squared, and pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless; whereas orient ones in India are rough and rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit themselves afterwards the jewels of the country; and therefore their dulness at first is to be borne with, if they be diligent. That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself who beats nature in a boy for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can make their parts which are naturally sluggish rise one minute before the hour nature hath appointed. 4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent also. Correction may reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whetting in the world can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it. Such boys he consigneth over to other professions. Shipwrights and boat-makers will choose those crooked pieces of timber which other carpenters refuse. lent merchants and mechanics scholars. Those may make excelwho will not serve for He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. He is and will be known to be an absolute monarch in his school. If cockering mothers proffer him money to purchase their sons an exemption from his rod (to live as it were in a peculiar, out of their master's jurisdiction), with disdain he refuseth it, and scorns the late custom in some places of commuting whipping into money, and ransoming boys from the rod at a set price. If he hath a stubborn youth, correction-proof, he debaseth not his authority by contesting with him, but fairly, if he can, puts him away before his obstinacy hath infected others. 5. He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. Many a schoolmaster better answereth the name raidoτρίβης than παιδαγωγός, rather tearing his scholars' fesh No with whipping than giving them good education. wonder if his scholars hate the Muses, being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends and furies. Junius complains de insolenti carnificina of his schoolmaster, by whom conscindebatur flagris septies aut octies in dies singulos. Yea hear the lamentable verses of poor Tusser in his own Life: 'From Paul's I went, to Eton sent, To learn straightways the Latin phrase, 'For fault but small or none at all Such an Orbilius mars more scholars than he makes. Their tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer which spake plain by nature, and whose stuttering at first was nothing else but fears quavering on their speech at their master's presence; and whose mauling them about their heads hath dulled those who in quickness exceeded their master. 6. He makes his school free to him who sues to him in forma pauperis. And surely learning is the greatest alms that can be given. But he is a beast who, because the poor scholar cannot pay him his wages, pays the scholar in his whipping; rather are diligent lads to be encouraged with all excitements to learning. This minds me of what I have heard concerning Mr Bust, that worthy late schoolmaster of Eton, who would never suffer any wandering begging scholar, such as justly the statute hath ranked in the fore-front of rogues, to come into his school, but would thrust him out with earnestness (however privately charitable unto him) lest his schoolboys should be disheartened from their books, by seeing some scholars, after their studying in the university, preferred to beggary. 7. He spoils not a good school to make thereof a bad college, therein to teach his scholars logic. For, besides that logic may have an action of trespass against grammar for encroaching on her liberties, syllogisms are solecisms taught in the school, and oftentimes they are forced afterwards in the university to unlearn the fumbling skill they had before. 8. Out of his school he is no way pedantical in carriage or discourse; contenting himself to be rich in Latin, though he doth not jingle with it in every company wherein he comes. To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make schoolmasters careful in their place—that the eminencies of their scholars have commended the memories of their schoolmasters to posterity, who, otherwise in obscurity, had altogether been forgotten. Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breeding of learned Ascham, his scholar? or of Hartgrave, in Burnley School, in the same county, but because he was the first did teach worthy Dr Whitaker? Nor do I honour the memory of Mulcaster for anything so much as his scholar, that gulf of learning, Bishop Andrews. This made the Athenians, the day before the great feast of Theseus, their founder, to sacrifice a ram to the memory of Conidas, his schoolmaster, that first instructed him. Bristol diamonds are transparent rock-crystals found thereabouts. Paidotribes, in paragraph 5, is 'boy-thrasher;' paidagogos, literally 'boy-leader.' Junius is Francis Junius or De Jon (see page 30). For Udall, see page 155, and for Lancelot Andrewes, page 388. The Good Yeoman. The good yeoman is a gentleman in ore, whom the next age may see refined, and is the wax capable of a genteel [gentle] impression, when the prince shall stamp it. Wise Solon, who accounted Tellus the Athenian the most happy man for living privately on his own lands, would surely have pronounced the English yeomanry a fortunate condition,' living in the temperate zone between greatness and want; an estate of people almost peculiar to England. France and Italy are like a die which hath no points between cinque and ace, nobility and peasantry. Their walls, though high, must needs be hollow, wanting filling-stones. Indeed, Germany hath her boors, like our yeomen; but by a tyrannical appropriation of nobility to some few ancient families, their yeomen are excluded from ever rising higher to clarify their bloods. In England, the temple of honour is bolted against none who have passed through the temple of virtue; nor is a capacity to be genteel denied to our yeoman who thus behaves himself. He wears russet clothes, but makes golden payment, having tin in his buttons and silver in his pocket. If he chance to appear in clothes above his rank, it is to grace some great man with his service, and then he blusheth at his own bravery. Otherwise, he is the surest landmark whence foreigners may take aim of the ancient English customs; the gentry more floating after foreign fashions. In his house he is bountiful both to strangers and poor people. Some hold, when hospitality died in England, she gave her last groan amongst the yeomen of Kent. And still at our yeoman's table you shall have as many joints as dishes; no meat disguised with strange sauces; no straggling joint of a sheep in the midst of a pasture of grass, beset with salads on every side, but solid, substantial food. No servitors (more nimble with their hands than the guests with their teeth) take away meat before stomachs are taken away. Here you have that which in itself is good, made better by the store of it, and best by the welcome to it. He improveth his land to a double value by his good husbandry. Some grounds that wept with water, or frowned with thorns, by draining the one and clearing the other, he makes both to laugh and sing with corn. By marl and limestones burned he bettereth his ground, and his industry worketh miracles, by turning stones into bread. Recreations. Recreations is a second creation, when weariness hath almost annihilated one's spirits. It is the breathing of the soul, which otherwise would be stifled with continual business. We may trespass in them, if using such as are forbidden by the lawyer, as against the statutes; physician, as against health; divine, as against conscience. 1. Be well satisfied in thy conscience of the lawfulness of the recreation thou usest. Some fight against cockfighting, and baitbull and bearbaiting, because man is not to be a common barretour [raiser of strife] to set the creatures at discord; and seeing antipathy betwixt creatures was kindled by man's sin, what pleasure can he take to see it burn? Others are of the contrary opinion, and that Christianity gives us a placard to use these sports; and that man's charter of dominion over the creatures enables him to employ them as well for pleasure as necessity. In these as in all other doubtful recreations, be well assured first of the legality of them. He that sins against his conscience sins with a witness. 2. Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreations. For sleep itself is a recreation; add not therefore sauce to sauce; and he cannot properly have any title to be refreshed who was not first faint. Pastime, like wine, is poison in the morning. It is then good husbandry to sow the head, which hath lain fallow all night, with some serious work. Chiefly entrench not on the Lord's day to use unlawful sports; this were to spare thine own flock, and to shear God's lamb. 3. Let thy recreations be ingenious [ingenuous], and bear proportion with thine age. If thou sayest with Paul, When I was a child, I did as a child; say also with him, but when I was a man, I put away childish things. Wear also the child's coat, if thou usest his sports. 4. Take heed of boisterous and over-violent exercises. Ringing ofttimes hath made good music on the bells, and put men's bodies out of tune, so that by overheating themselves they have rung their own passing-bell. 5. Yet the ruder sort of people scarce count any thing a sport which is not loud and violent. The Muscovite women esteem none loving husbands except they beat their wives. It is no pastime with country clowns that cracks not pates, breaks not shins, bruises not limbs, tumbles and tosses not all the body. They think themselves not warm in their geerst [gearings] till they are all on fire, and count it but dry sport till they swim in their own sweat. Yet I conceive the physician's rule in exercises, Ad ruborem, but non ad sudorem, is too scant measure. 6. Refresh that part of thyself which is most wearied. If thy life be sedentary, exercise thy body; if stirring and active, recreate thy mind. But take heed of cozening thy mind, in setting it to do a double task under pretence of giving it a playday, as in the labyrinth of chess, and other tedious and studious games. Books. It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well-furnished armoury. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels [chimney-cans], as knowing that many of them, built merely for uniformity, are without chimneys, and more without fires. . . . Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied. Education confined too much to Language. Our common education is not intended to render us good and wise, but learned: it hath not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and prudence, but hath imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; it hath chosen out for us not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin; and, by these rules, has instilled into our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity. But a good education alters the judgment and manners. 'Tis a silly conceit that men without languages are also without understanding. It's apparent in all ages, that some such have been even prodigies for ability; for it's not to be believed that Wisdom speaks to her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Marriage. Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, ὅλος λαμπρός, 'wholly clear,' without clouds; yea, expect both wind and storms sometimes, which when blown over, the air is the clearer and wholesomer for it. Make account of certain cares and troubles which will attend thee. Remember the nightingales, which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones. Decline of Great Families. It happened in the reign of King James, when Henry Earl of Huntingdon was lieutenant of Leicestershire, that a labourer's son in that country was pressed into the wars-as I take it, to go over with Count Mansfield. The old man at Leicester requested his son might be discharged, as being the only staff of his age, who by his industry maintained him and his mother. The earl demanded his name, which the man for a long time was loath to tell, as suspecting it a fault for so poor a man to tell the truth. At last he told his name was Hastings. 'Cousin Hastings,' said the earl, we cannot all be top branches of the tree, though we all spring from the same root; your son, my kinsman, shall not be pressed.' So good was the meeting of modesty in a poor, with courtesy in an honourable person, and gentry I believe in both. And I have reason to believe, that some who justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, though ignorant of their own extraction, are hid in the heap of common people, where they find that under a thatched cottage which some of their ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded [leadcovered] castle, contentment, with quiet and security. Henry de Essex. He was too well known in our English chronicles, being baron of Raleigh in Essex and standard bearer of England. It happened in the reign of this king [Henry II.] there was a fierce battle fought in Flintshire, at Coleshall, between the English and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex animum et signum simul abjecit (betwixt traitor and coward, cast away both his courage and banner together), occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the baseness to do had the boldness to deny the doing of so foul a fact; until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl; under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life. Richard Hackluit was born of an ancient extract in this county, whose family hath flourished at . . . in good esteem. He was bred a student in Christ Church in Oxford, and after was prebendary of Westminster. His genius inclined him to the study of history, and especially to the marine part thereof, which made him keep constant intelligence with the most noted seamen of Wapping, until the day of his death. He set forth a large collection of the English sea voyages, ancient, middle, modern; taken partly out of private letters which never were, or without his had not been, printed; partly out of small treatises, printed and since irrecoverably lost, had not his providence preserved them. For some pamphlets are produced which for their cheapness and smallness men for the present neglect to buy, presuming they may procure them at their pleasure ; which small books, their first and last edition being past (like some spirits that appear but once), cannot afterwards with any price or pains be recovered. In a word, many of such useful tracts of sea adventures, which before were scattered as several ships, Mr Hackluit hath embodied into a fleet, divided into three squadrons, so many several volumes: a work of great honour to England; it being possible that many ports and islands in America, which, being base and barren, bear only a bare name for the present, may prove rich places for the future. And then these voyages will be produced, and pleaded, as good evidence of their belonging to England, as first discovered and denominated by Englishmen. Mr Hackluit died in the beginning of king James's reign, leaving a fair estate to an unthrift son, who embezzled it on this token, that he vaunted, that he cheated the covetous usurer, who had given him spick and span new money, for the old land of his great great grandfather.' Sir Henry Sidney. . . . I will close his life with this encomium which I find in a worthy author [Naunton] : 'His disposition was rather to seek after the antiquities and the weal-publick of those countries which he governed, than to obtain lands and revenues within the same; for I know not one foot of land that he had either in Wales or Ireland.' Sir Philip Sidney. Reader, I am resolved not to part him from his father; such the sympathy betwixt them, living and dying both within the compass of the same year. Otherwise this knight, in relation to my book, may be termed an ubiquitary, and appear amongst statesmen, soldiers, lawyers, writers, yea princes themselves, being (though not elected) in election to be king of Poland, which place he declined, preferring rather to be a subject to queen Elizabeth than a sovereign beyond the seas. He was born at Penshurst in this county [Kent], son to Sir Henry Sidney . . . . and sister's son to Robert earl of Leicester; bred in Christ-church in Oxford. Such his appetite to learning, that he could never be fed fast enough therewith; and so quick and strong his digestion, that he soon turned it into wholesome nourishment, and thrived healthfully thereon. His home-bred abilities travel perfected with foreign accomplishments, and a sweet nature set a gloss upon both. He was so essential to the English court, that it seemed maimed without his company, being a complete master of matter and language, as his 'Arcadia' doth evidence. I confess I have heard some of modern pretended wits cavil thereat, merely because they made it not themselves: such who say, that his book is the occasion that many precious hours are otherwise spent no better, must acknowledge it also the cause that many idle hours are otherwise spent no worse, than in reading thereof. At last, leaving the court, he followed the camp, being made governor of Flushing, under his uncle earl of Leices ter. But the walls of that city (though high and strong) could not confine the activity of his mind, which must into the field, and before Zutphen was unfortunately slain with a shot, in a small skirmish, which we may sadly term a great battle, considering our heavy loss therein. His corpse, being brought over into England, was buried in the choir of St Paul's with general lamentation. Nicholas Wood was born at Halingborne [Hollingbourn] in this county [Kent], being a landed man, and a true labourer. He was afflicted with a disease called Boulimia, or Caninus Apetitus; insomuch that he would devour at one meal what was provided for twenty men, eat a whole hog at a sitting, and at another time thirty dozen of pigeons, whilst others make mirth at his malady. Let us raise our gratitude to the goodness of God, specially when he giveth us appetite enough for our meat, and yet meat too much for our appetite; whereas this painful man spent all his estate to provide provant [provender] for his belly, and died very poor about the year 1630. |