others; but that would only be in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing 5 an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics ro subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE°

TEMPERANCE IN PLEASURE

PUNISH not thyself with pleasure; glut not thy sense with palative delights; nor revenge the contempt of temperance by the penalty of satiety. Were there an age of delight or any pleasure durable, who would not honor Volupia? But the race of delight is short, and pleasures 5 have mutable faces. The pleasures of one age are not pleasures in another, and their lives fall short of our own. Even in our sensual days, the strength of delight is in its seldomness or rarity, and sting in its satiety: mediocrity is its life, and immoderacy its confusion. The luxurious 10 emperors of old inconsiderately satiated themselves with the dainties of sea and land, till, wearied through all varieties, their refections became a study unto them, and they were fain to feed by invention: novices in true epicurism! which, by mediocrity, paucity, quick and 15 healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain in a piece of Cytheridian cheese, and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions. Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start of nauseating luxury; unto whose 20 clear and naked appetite every meal is a feast, and in one single dish the first course of Metellus °; who are cheaply hungry and never lose their hunger, or advantage of a craving appetite, because obvious food contents it; while Nero, half famished, could not feed upon a piece of bread, 25 and, lingering after his snowed water, hardly got down an

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ordinary cup of Calda. By such circumscriptions of pleasure the contemned philosophers reserved unto themselves the secret of delight, which the helluos° of those days lost in their exorbitances. In vain we study delight; 5 it is at the command of every sober mind, and in every sense born with us; but nature, who teacheth us the rule of pleasure, instructeth also in the bounds thereof, and where its line expireth. And, therefore, temperate minds, not pressing their pleasures until the sting appeareth, 10 enjoy their contentations contentedly, and without regret, and so escape the folly of excess, to be pleased unto displacency.

ΙΟ

JOHN MILTON°

AN APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born,
Or of the Eternal coëternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light

Dwelt from eternity dwelt then in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising World of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite !
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

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Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight,

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Through utter and through middle Darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,

Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So think a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more

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Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead and ever during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, thou, Celestial Light,

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.