Ghost in Saint Paul, who saith unto the Phillippians in this wise, Whatsoever things are true (but a painted face is a false face) whatsoever things are venerable (but who esteems a painted face venerable?) whatsoever things are just (but will any man of judgement say, that to paint the face is a point of justice? Who dare say it is according to the will of God which is the rule of justice? Doth the law of God command it? Doth true reason teach it? Doth lawes of men enjoyne it?) whatsoever things are (chaste and) pure: (but is painting of the face a point of chastity? Is that pure that proceeds out of the impurity of the soule, and which is of deceipt, and tends unto deceipt? Is that chaste, which is used to wooe mens eyes unto it?) "whatsoever things are lovely" (but will any man out of a well informed judgement say, that this kinde of painting is worthy love, or that a painted face is worthy to be fancied?) "whatsoever things are of good report: If there bee any vertue, if there bee any praise, think on these things." But I hope to paint the face, to weare an artificiall colour, or complexion, is no vertue; neither is it of good report amongst the vertuous. I read that Iezabel did practise it, but I find not that any holy Matrone or religious Virgine ever used it: And it may perhaps of some be praised, but doubtlesse not of such as are judicious, but of them rather hated and discommended. A painted face is the devils"Looking-glasse": there hee stands peering and toying (as an Ape in a looking-glasse) joying to behold himselfe therein; for in it he may reade pride, vanity, and vaine-glory. Painting is an enemy to blushing, which is vertues colour. And indeed how unworthy are they to bee credited in things of moment, that are so false in their haire, or colour, over which age, and sicknesse, and many accidents doe tyrannize; yea and where their deceipt is easily discerned? And whereas the passions and conditions of a man, and his age, is something discovered by the face, this painting hindereth a mans judgement herein, so that if they were as well able to colour the eyes, as they are their haire and faces, a man could discerne little or nothing in such kind of people. In briefe, these painters are sometimes injurious to those, that are naturally faire and lovely, and no painters; partly, in that these are thought sometimes to bee painted, because of the common use of painting; and partly, in that these artificial creatures steal away the praise from the natural beauty by reason of their Art, when it is not espyed, whereas were it not for their cunning, they would not bee deemed equal to the other. It is great pitty that this outlandish vanity is in so much request and practise with us, as it is. ON DREAMS SIR THOMAS BROWNE Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a physician who won distinction for himself as the author of two prose works, Religio Medici and Urn Burial. Some two hundred years after his death appeared the volume of unpublished papers (1835) from which "On Dreams" is taken. His work is curious in its subject matter and invariably erudite; but has withal a certain richness of tone which is partly due to the majesty and dignity of his language and partly to the rhythm of his prose. The intimately revealing quality of his work is suggestive of the familiar essay to follow. Browne is noteworthy for his freedom from religious prejudice at a time when religious controversy was rife and for the invigorating intellectual quality of his writing. HALF our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good part of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived. The day suplieth us with truths; the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural account of our beings. And, therefore, having passed the day in sober labors and rational enquiries of truth, we are fain to betake ourselves unto such a state of being, wherein the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better than folly and madness. Happy are they that go to bed with grand music, like Pythagoras, or have ways to compose the fantastical spirit, whose unruly wanderings take off inward sleep, filling our heads with St. Anthony's visions, and the dreams of Lipara in the sober chambers of rest. Virtuous thoughts of the day lay up good treasures for the night; whereby the impressions of imaginary forms arise into sober similitudes, acceptable unto our slumbering selves and preparatory unto divine impressions. Hereby Solomon's sleep was happy. Thus prepared, Jacob might well dream of angels upon a pillow of stone. And the best sleep of Adam might be the best of any after. That there should be divine dreams seems unreasonably doubted by Aristotle. That there are demoniacal dreams we have little reason to doubt. Why may there not be angelical? If there be guardian spirits, they may not be inactively about us in sleep; but may someimes order our dreams; and many strange hints, instigations, or discourses, which are so amazing unto us, may arise from such foundations. But the phantasms of sleep do commonly walk in the great road of natural and animal dreams, wherein the thoughts or actions of the day are acted over and echoed in the night. Who can therefore wonder that Chrysostom should dream of St. Paul, who daily read his epistles; or that Cardan, whose head was so taken up about the stars, should dream that his soul was in the moon! Pious persons, whose thoughts are daily busied about heaven, and the blessed state thereof, can hardly escape the nightly phantasms of it, which though sometimes taken for illuminations, or divine dreams, yet rightly perpended may prove but animal visions, and natural night-scenes of their awaking contemplations. Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition, and from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense and mystery of similitude, whereby, he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notion dependeth, may, by symbolical adaptation, hold a ready way to read the characters of Morpheus. In dreams of such a nature, Artemidorus, Achmet, and Astrampsichus, from Greek, Egyptian, and Arybian oneiro-criticism,1 may hint some interpretation: who, while we read of a ladder in Jacob's dream, will tell us that ladders and scalary ascents signify preferment; and while we consider the dream of Pharaoh, do teach us that rivers overflowing speak plenty, lean oxen, famine. and scarcity; and therefore it was but reasonable in Pharaoh to demand the interpretation from his magicians, who, being Egyptians, should have been well well versed in symbols and the hieroglyphical notions of things. The greatest tyrant in such divinations was Nabuchodonosor, while, besides the interpretation, he demanded the dream itself; which being probably determined by divine immission, might escape the common road of phantasms, that might have been traced by Satan. When Alexander, going to besiege Tyre, dreamt of a Satyr, it was no hard exposition for a Grecian to say, "Tyre will be thine." He that dreamed that he saw his father washed by Jupiter and anointed by the sun, had cause to fear that he might be crucified, whereby his body would be washed by the rain, and drop by the heat of the sun. The dream of Vespasian was of harder exposition; as also that of the emperor Mauritius, concerning his successor Phocas. And a man might have been hard put to it, to interpret the language of Aesculapius, when to a consumptive person he held forth his fingers; implying thereby that his cure lay in dates, from the homonomy of the Greek, which signifies dates and fingers. We owe unto dreams that Galen was a physician, Dion an historian, and that 'The art of interpreting dreams. the world hath seen some notable pieces of Cardan; yet, he that should order his affairs by dreams, or make the night a rule unto the day, might be ridiculously deluded; wherein Cicero is much to be pitied, who having excellently discoursed of the vanity of dreams, was yet undone by the flattery of his own, which urged him to apply himself unto Augustus. However dreams may be fallacious concerning outward events, yet may they be truly significant at home; and whereby we may more sensibly understand ourselves. Men act in sleep with some conformity unto their awaked senses; and consolations or discouragements may be drawn from dreams which intimately tell us ourselves. Luther was not like to fear a spirit in the night, when such an apparition would not terrify him in the day. Alexander would hardly have run away in the sharpest combats of sleep, nor Demosthenes have stood stoutly to it, who was scarce able to do it in his prepared senses. Persons of radical integrity will not easily be perverted in their dreams, nor noble minds do pitiful things in sleep. Crassus would have hardly been bountiful in a dream, whose fist was so close awake. But a man might have lived all his life upon the sleeping hand of Antonius. There is an art to make dreams, as well aş their interpretations; and physicians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some gives quiet, dreams. Cato, who doted upon cabbage, might find the crude effects thereof in his sleep; wherein the Egyptians might find some advantage by their superstitious abstinence from onions. Pythagoras might have had calmer sleeps, if he had totally abstained from beans. Even Daniel, the great interpreter of dreams, in his leguminous diet, seems to have chosen no advantageous food for quiet sleeps, according to Grecian physic. To add unto the delusion of dreams, the fantastical objects seem greater than they are; and being beheld in the vaporous state of sleep, enlarge their diameters unto us; whereby it may prove more easy to dream of giants than pigmies. Democritus might seldom dream of atoms, who so often thought of them. He almost might dream himself a bubble extending unto the eighth sphere. A little water makes a sea; a small puff of wind a tempest. A grain of sulphur kindled in the blood may make a flame like Aetna; and a small spark in the bowels of Olympias a lightning over all the chamber. But, beside these innocent delusions, there is a sinful state of dreams. Death alone, not sleep, is able to put an end unto sin; and there may be a night-book of our iniquities; for beside the transgressions of the day, casuists will tell us of mortal sins in dreams, arising from evil precogitations; meanwhile human law regards not noctambulos; and if a night-walker should break his neck, or kill a man, takes no notice of it. Dionysius was absurdly tyrannical to kill a man for dreaming that he had killed him; and really to take his life, who had but fantastically taken away his. Lamia was ridiculously unjust to sue a young man for a reward, who had confessed that pleasure from her in a dream which she had denied unto his awaking senses: conceiving that she had merited somewhat from his fantastical fruition and shadow of herself. If there be such debts, we owe deeply unto sympathies; but the common spirit of the world must be ready in such arrearages. If some have swooned, they may have. also died in dreams, since death is but a confirmed swooning. Whether Plato died in a dream, as some deliver, he must rise again to inform us. rise again to inform us. That some have never dreamed, is as improbable as that some have never laughed. That children dream not the first half-year; that ment dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams; dreams out of the ivory gate,1 and visions before midnight. Both Virgil and Spenser repeat Homer's poetic superstition regarding the two gates of sleep, one of horn from which issue true dreams; the other of ivory from which false dreams proceed. OF MYSELF ABRAHAM COWLEY Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was known to his contemporaries as a poet. The method of versification that he affected won from Johnson the somewhat inaccurate caption metaphysical because of its intellectual straining after conceits, and its labored prosody. His wooden verses contrast strangely with the genuine feeling of his familiar essays. Like Bacon, he regarded these attempts as of little value, but his work marks a distinct step in the evolution of the familiar essay; for, conceiving of himself as a possible subject, he attained the distinctively personal note which had marked the earlier work of Montaigne. "Of Myself" was published posthumously in 1688 as one of Several Discourses by Ways of Essays, in Verse and Prose. IT IS a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear anything of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation, of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn, without book, the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now-which, I confess, I wonder at myself-may appear at the latter end of an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed, with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish; but of this part which I here set down, if a very little were corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. This only grant me, that my means may lie Not from great deeds, but good alone; Books should, not business, entertain the light, My garden painted o'er Horace might envy in his Sabine field. Thus would I double my life's fading space, These unbought sports, that happy state, 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, the characters in me. They were like letters cut in the bark of a which I did not fall in love with, when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several the great persons, whom I liked very well, young tree, which, with the tree, still grow 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 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. 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 public violent 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 me 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 in 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 the 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 plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty 1The English Civil War which forced the Royalist Cowley into exile. His fidelity was rewarded by appointment in Paris as secretary to the erstwhile queen Henrietta Maria, "one of the best princesses in the world." 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, though 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 eat 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, &c. 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 pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. 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 thy neglected verse does raise, &c. 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 corpus perditum,' without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at man, who says to his soul, Take thy ease: I 2"A lost man;" i.e., in desperation. |