the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, the divineness of souls excepted, will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue, and imperfections of manners. For if a man's mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration of the mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day, and saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was broken; and went forth the next day, and saw a woman weeping for her son that was dead; and thereupon said, " Yesterday I saw a fragile thing broken, to-day I have seen a mortal thing die." And therefore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes, and the conquest of all fears together.

It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind, sometimes purging the ill humors, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping the digestion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and exulcerations thereof, and the like; and therefore I will conclude with the chief reason of all, which is, that it disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account; nor the pleasure of that most pleasant life, which consists in our daily feeling ourselves to become better. The good parts he hath, he will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them: the faults he hath, he will learn how to hide and color them, but not much to amend them: like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Whereas, with the learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use and employ. ment thereof.

STUDIES.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience-for natural abilities are like natural

plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only 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 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.

THE END OF KNOWLEDGE.

It is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism; but a further proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion: for in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause; but when a man passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the works of Providence, then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. To conclude, therefore, let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the Book of God's word, or in the Book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress, or proficiency in both: only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle, or confound these learnings together.

THE IMMORTALITY OF LITERARY FAME.

Let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth genera

tion, and raising of houses and families; to this tendeth buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the strength of all other humane desires: we see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For, have not the verses of Homer continued twentyfive hundred years and more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years. For the originals cannot last: and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions the one of the other?

JOHN DONNE. 1573-1631.

JOHN DONNE, D. D., though during his life most popular as a poet, is now chiefly valued for his prose writings. He was born in London, in 1573, of Roman Catholic parents, but after completing his studies at Oxford, he embraced Protestantism, and became secretary to lord chancellor Ellesmere. Falling in love with the chancellor's niece, he married her privately, for which he was dismissed from his office, and even imprisoned. He was soon released from his confinement, and having "taken orders," the king (James I.) made him one of his chaplains, at whose request, also, he was presented with the degree of D. D. by the University of Cambridge. Subsequently, he became preacher of Lincoln's Inn, and received several other church honors, and died March, 1631.

Donne's poems consist of elegies, satires, letters, epigrams, divine poems, and miscellaneous pieces, and procured for him among his contemporaries an extraordinary share of reputation, but now he is almost entirely forgotten. Either extreme does him injustice. Though he has not much harmony of versification, and but little simplicity and naturalness in thought and expression, yet he exhibits much erudition, united to an exuberance of wit, and to a fancy, rich, vivid, and picturesque, though, at the same time, it must be confessed, not a little fantastical. Dr. Johnson, in his life of Cowley, considers him as the founder of the metaphysical school of poets; meaning, thereby, the

faculty of wittily associating the most widely discordant images, and presenting ideas under the most remote and fanciful aspects.

His prose writings consist chiefly of sermons, which, though they have some of the faults of his poetry, are full of rich, condensed, and vigorous thought, and, what is far better, show the author to be an eminently holy man. As a preacher, old Izaak Walton says of him, "he is, in earnest, weeping sometimes for his audience, sometimes with them; always preaching to himself, like an angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to heaven, in holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives; here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it; and a virtue so as to make it beloved by those that loved it not; and all this with a most particular grace, and an inexpressible addition of comeliness." 1

The following presents a very fair specimen of his poetry: indeed, it is more simple and natural than the greater part of it. The simile of the compasses, whatever may be thought of its beauty or fitness, is certainly original.

THE FAREWELL.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now-and some say, no;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant:

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull, sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which alimented it.

But we're by love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is;
Inter-assured of the mind,

Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls, therefore, (which are one,)
Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th' other do.

1 Read-Johnson's "Life of Cowley;" also, an article in the "Retrospective Review,” viii. 31, which gives to his poetry higher praise than we think it deserves; also, some remarks in "Drake's Shakspeare," i. 615; and above all, Izaak Walton's "Life." A selection from his prose works was published at Oxford, 1840, in one small volume.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circles just,
And makes me end where I begun.

But we turn with more pleasure to his prose :—

THE PSALMS.

The Psalms are the manna of the church. As manna tasted to every man like that he liked best, so do the Psalms minister instruction and satisfaction to every man, in every emergency and occasion. David was not only a clear prophet of Christ himself, but a prophet of every particular Christian; he foretells what I, what any shall do, and suffer, and say. And as the whole Book of Psalms is (as the spouse speaks of the name of Christ) an ointment poured out upon all sorts of sores, a cerecloth that supples all bruises, a balm that searches all wounds; so are there some certain Psalms that are imperial Psalms, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over all occasions, catholic, universal Psalms, that apply themselves to all necessities.

ALL CHRISTIANS ARE TO PREACH BY EXAMPLE.

If you be a holy people, you are also a royal priesthood; if you be all God's saints, you are all God's priests; and if you be his priests, it is your office to preach too; as we by words, you by your holy works; as we by contemplation, you by conversation; as we by our doctrine, so you by your lives, are appointed by God to preach to one another: and therefore every particular man must wash his own feet, look that he have speciosos pedes,1 that his example may preach to others, for this is truly a regal priest. hood, not to work upon others by words, but by actions. If we love one another as Christ loved us, we must wash one another's feet, as he commanded his apostles; there is a priestly duty lies upon every man, brotherly to reprehend a brother whom he sees trampling in foul ways, wallowing in foul sins.

GOD MAY BE WORSHIPPED ANYWHERE.

It is true, God may be devoutly worshipped anywhere; in all places of his dominion, my soul shall praise the Lord, says David. It is not only a concurring of men, a meeting of so many bodies that makes a church; if thy soul and body be met together, an

1 Pure feet.