Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ This sermon against greed of all kinds—avarice, luxury, ambition of state and magnificence of expenditure—is full of lofty wisdom and of memorable eloquence.
What a wretchedness is this, to thrust all our riches outward, and be beggars within; to contemplate nothing but the little, vile, and sordid things of the world: not the great, noble, and precious? We serve our avarice; and not content with the good of the earth that is offered us, we search and dig for the evil that is hidden. God offered us those things, and' placed them at hand and near us, that he knew were profitable for us ”

“ Great as was Jonson's reliance on the results of training and study, he never forgot that 'arts and precept avail nothing, except nature be beneficial and aiding. And therefore these things are no more written to a dull disposition than rules of husbandry to a barren soil. No precepts will profit a fool; no more than beauty will the blind, or music the deaf. As we should take care that our style in writing be neither dry nor empty, we should look again it be not winding, or wanton with far-fetched descriptions: either is a vice. ”

“ It is a good thing to inflame the mind, and though ambition itself be a vice, it is often the cause of great virtue. Give me that wit whom praise excites, glory puts on, or disgrace grieves; he is to be nourished with ambition, pricked forward with honour, checked with reprehension, and never to be suspected of sloth. ”

“ And yet it is certain that in fervour of inspiration, in depth and force and glow of thought and emotion and expression, Donne's verses are as far above Gray's as Jonson's notes or observations on men and morals, on principles and on facts, are superior to Bacon's in truth of insight, in breadth of view, in vigour of reflection and in concision of eloquence. ”

“ The following passage seems to me a magnificent illustration of this truth.
I know no disease of the soul but ignorance; not of the arts and sciences, but of itself: yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and the common confounder of truth; with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. Great understandings are most racked and troubled with it; nay, sometimes they will rather choose to die than not to know the things they study for. ”

“ A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes. All his government is groping. In sovereignty it is a most happy thing not to be compelled; but so it is the most miserable not to be counselled. And how can he be counselled that cannot see to read the best counsellors, which are books; for they neither flatter us nor hide from us? ”

“ The dry curt style of the statesman, docked and trimmed into sentences that are regularly snapped off or snipped down at the close of each deliverance, is as alien and as far from the fresh and vigorous spontaneity of the poet's as is the trimming and hedging morality of the essay on 'simulation and dissimulation' from the spirit and instinct of the man who 'of all things loved to be called honest.' But indeed, from the ethical point of view which looks merely or mainly to character, the comparison is little less than an insult to the Laureate ”

“ They would not have it run without rubs: as if that style were more strong and manly that struck the ear with a kind of unevenness. These men err not by chance, but knowingly and willingly; they are like men that affect a fashion by themselves, have some singularity in a ruff, cloak, or hat-band; or their beards specially cut to provoke beholders, and set a mark upon themselves. They would be reprehended, while they are looked on. And this vice, one, that is in authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to them to be imitated ”

“ It is vile, and a poor thing, to place our happiness on these desires. Say we wanted them all. Famine ends famine.
These reflections are uncourtly enough from the hand of a courtly poet; but they are tame and tender if compared with his animadversions on 'vice and deformity,' which 'we may behold—so much the fouler in having all the splendour of riches to gild them, or the false light of honour and power to help them. ”

“ There is nothing with some princes sacred above their majesty; or profane, but what violates their sceptres. But a prince with such a council [qu. counsel?] is like the god Terminus of stone, his own landmark; or (as it is in the fable) a crowned lion. . . . No men hate an evil prince more than they that helped to make him such. And none more boastingly weep his ruin than they that procured and practised it. The same path leads to ruin which did to rule, when men profess a license in government. A good king is a public servant. ”

“ The note on flattery and flatterers is as exalted in its austerity as trenchant in its scorn. And the following remark 'on human life' is the condensed or distilled essence of a noble satire or a powerful essay.
I have considered our whole life is like a play, wherein every man, forgetful of himself, is in travail with expression of another. Nay, we so insist in imitating others, as we cannot (when it is necessary) return to ourselves; like children that imitate the vices of stammerers so long, till at last they become such; and make the habit to another nature, as it is never forgotten. ”

“ He may hear, you will say; but how shall he always be sure to hear truth? or be counselled the best things, not the sweetest? They say princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship, The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom. Which is an argument that the good counsellors to princes are the best instruments of a good age. For though the prince himself be of most prompt inclination to all virtue, yet the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor, and other tackle. ”

“ This conscientious and self-conscious pride of intellect finds even a nobler and more memorable expression in the admirable words which instruct or which remind us of the truth that 'it is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by the wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.' A sentence worthy to be set beside the fittest motto for all loyal men—'Æqua laus est a laudatis laudari et ab improbis improbari.' Which it would be well that every man worthy to apply it should lay to heart, and act and bear himself accordingly. ”

“ Had Shakespeare but left us the like!
I myself could in my youth have repeated all that ever I had made, and so continued till I was past forty: since, it is much decayed in me. Yet I can repeat whole books that I have read, and poems of some selected friends, which I have liked to charge my memory with. It was wont to be faithful to me; but, shaken with age now, and sloth, which weakens the strongest abilities, it may perform somewhat, but cannot promise much. By exercise it is to be made better, and serviceable. ”

“ No good Christian or ethnic, if he be honest, can miss it: no statesman or patriot should. For without truth all the actions of mankind are craft, malice, or what you will rather than wisdom. Homer says he hates him worse than hell-mouth that utters one thing with his tongue and keeps another in his breast. Which high expression was grounded on divine reason: for a lying mouth is a stinking pit, and murders with the contagion it venteth. Besides, nothing is lasting that is feigned; it will have another face than it had ere long. As Euripides saith, 'No lie ever grows old.' ”

“ It is comically pathetic to find that the failure of Jonson's later comedies had led him to observe, with the judicious Aristotle, that 'the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease' ”

“ The whole of the section which opens with these noble and fervent words should be most carefully studied by those who would appreciate the peculiar character of Jonson's intelligence and genius. It may be doubted, even by those who would admit that we learn best what we learn earliest, whether 'nature in children is more patient of labour in study, than in age; for the sense of the pain, the labour of the judgment, is absent; they do not measure what they have done. ”

“ Some men, what losses soever they have, they make them greater: and if they have none, even all that is not gotten is a loss, Can there be creatures of more wretched condition than these, that continually labour under their own misery and others' envy? [6] A man should study other things: not to covet, not to fear, not to repent him: to make his base such as no tempest shall shake him: to be secure of all opinion, and pleasing to himself, even for that wherein he displeases others: for the worst opinion, gotten for doing well, should delight us. ”

“ No man ever made more generous response to the friendly or generous kindness of others than Ben Jonson: no man had ever less disposition or inclination towards the grudging mood of mind which regrets or the abject mood of mind which resents the acceptance of a benefit. ”

“ Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient, and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always of one and the same habit: yet it doth so enter and penetrate the inmost affection (being done by an excellent artificer) as sometimes it overcomes the power of speech and oratory. ”

“ Yet the great herd, the multitude, that in all other things are divided, in this alone conspire and agree; to love money. They wish for it, they embrace it, they adore it: while yet it is possest with greater stir and torment than it was gotten. ”

“ For change is a kind of refreshing in studies, and infuseth knowledge by way of recreation.' The old Westminster boy, who had paid such loyal homage of gratitude to the 'most reverend head' of his old master, is as emphatic in his preference of public to private education as in his insistence that scholars 'should not be affrighted or deterred in their entry, but drawn on with exercise and emulation.' His illustrious namesake of the succeeding century was hardly more emphatic in his advocacy of the opposite principle. ”

“ To breed them at home is to breed them in a shade; where in a school they have the light and heat of the sun. They are used and accustomed to things and men. When they come forth into the commonwealth, they find nothing new, or to seek. They have made their friendships and aids, some to last their age. They hear what is commanded to others as well as themselves. Much approved, much corrected; all which they bring to their own store and use, and learn as much as they hear. Eloquence would be but a poor thing if we did but converse with singulars—speak man and man together. ”

“ He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.
From the forty-third to the forty-eighth entry inclusive these disconnected notes should be read as a short continuous essay on envy and calumny For weight, point, and vigour, it would hardly be possible to overpraise it. ”

“ If any reader should think such a mixture of critical self-examination and complacent self-glorification impossible to any man of indisputable genius and of general good sense, that reader is not yet 'sealed of the tribe of Ben' ”

“ But finer by far and far more memorable than this is the following commentary on the fact that the emperor whose 'voice was worthier a headsman than a head, when he wished the people of Rome had but one neck,' 'found (when he fell) they had many hands.'
A tyrant, how great and mighty soever he may seem to cowards and sluggards, is but one creature, one animal. ”

“ It is easier to do many things, and continue, than to do one thing long.'
'A fool may talk,' as Jonson observes a little further on, 'but a wise man speaks'; and to such a man it will scarcely be questioned that we have been listening. But though 'it were a sluggish and base thing to despair' when the attainment of knowledge is possible, yet, 'if a man should prosecute as much as could be said of everything, his work would find no end.'
The next four notes deal more directly with special and practical details and principles of style. ”

“ Nothing is more short-lived than [? their] pride: it is but while their clothes last: stay but while these are worn out, you cannot wish the thing more wretched or dejected.
In the four notes which compose a brief essay on painting (or, as Jonson calls it, picture) the finest passage by far is this wise and noble word of tribute paid to another great art by a great artist in letters:—
Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth and all the wisdom of poetry. ”

“ What follows as part of the same note is a letter to a nobleman who had asked Jonson's advice as to the education of his sons, 'and especially to the advancement of their studies.' The kindly and practical wisdom of his counsel is 'not of an age, but for all time': indeed, it is in some points as far ahead of our own age as of the writer's. Though nature 'be proner in some children to some disciplines, yet are they naturally prompt to taste all by degrees, and with change. ”

“ In the subsequent essay, divided under ten several heads into ten several notes, on 'the difference of wits,' or the diversity of accomplishments and understandings, there is much worth study for its soundness of judgment, its accuracy of definition, and its felicity of expression, It would be well if educational and professional formalists would bear in mind the truth that 'there is no doctrine will do good, where nature is wanting' ”