The duty I owe your Lordship, as well as my friendship for Mr. Cowley, determined me to lose no time in executing the commission you was pleased to charge me with by Mr. D***. I went early the next morning to Barn Elms[32]; intending to pass the whole day with him, and to try if what I might be able to suggest on the occasion, together with the weight of your lordship’s advice, could not divert him from his strange project of Retirement. Your lordship, no doubt, as all his other friends, had observed his bias that way to be very strong; but who, that knew his great sense, could have thought of it its carrying him to so extravagant a resolution? For my own part, I suspected it so little, that, though he would often talk of retiring, and especially since your lordship’s favour to him[33], I considered it only as the usual language of poets, which they take up one after another, and love to indulge in, as what they suppose becomes their family and profession. It could never come into my thoughts, that one, who knew the world so well as Mr. Cowley, and had lived so long in it, who had so fair hopes and so noble a patron, could seriously think of quitting the scene at his years, and all for so fantastic a purpose as that of growing old in the corner of a country village.
These, my lord, were my sentiments, when your friendly message alarmed me with the apprehension of there being more in the matter than I had suspected. Yet still I considered it only as a hasty thought, which a fit of the spleen, or of the muse it may be, had raised; and which the free remonstrance of a friend would easily disperse, or prevent at least from coming to any fixed and settled resolution. But how shall I express to your lordship the surprise I was in, to find that this resolution was not only taken, but rooted so deeply in him, that no arguments, nor even your lordship’s authority, could shake it? I have ever admired Mr. Cowley, as a man of the happiest temper and truest judgment; but, to say the least, there was something so particular, I had almost said perverse, in what he had to allege for himself on this occasion, that I cannot think I acquit myself to your lordship, without laying before you the whole of this extraordinary conversation; and, as far as my recollection will serve, in the very words in which it passed betwixt us.
I went, as I told your lordship, pretty early to Barn Elms; but my friend had gotten the start of me by some hours. He was busying himself with some improvements of his garden, and the fields that lie about his house. The whole circuit of his domain was not so large, but that I presently came up with him. “My dear friend,” said he, embracing me, but with a look of some reserve and disgust, “and is it you then I have the happiness to see, at length, in my new settlement? Though I fled hither from the rest of the world, I had no design to get out of the reach of my friends. And, to be plain with you, I took it a little amiss from one whose entire affection I had reckoned upon, that he should leave me to myself for these two whole months, without discovering an inclination, either from friendship or curiosity, to know how this retirement agreed with me. What could induce my best friend to use me so unkindly?”
Surely, said I, you forget the suddenness of your flight, and the secresy with which the resolution was taken. We supposed you gone only for a few days, to see to the management of your affairs; and could not dream of your rusticating thus long, at a time when the town and court are so busy; when the occasions of your friends and your own interests seemed to require your speedy return to us. However, continued I, it doth not displease me to find you so dissatisfied with this solitude. It looks as if the short experience, you have had of this recluse life, did not recommend it to you in the manner you expected. Retirement is a fine thing in imagination, and is apt to possess you poets with strange visions. But the charm is rarely lasting; and a short trial, I find, hath served to correct these fancies. You feel yourself born for society and the world, and, by your kind complaints of your friend, confess how unnatural it is to deny yourself the proper delights of a man, the delights of conversation.
Not so fast, interrupted he, if you please, in your conclusions about the nature of retirement. I never meant to give up my right in the affections of those few I call my friends. But what has this to do with the general purpose of retreating from the anxieties of business, the intrigues of policy, or the impertinencies of conversation? I have lived but too long in a ceaseless round of these follies. The best part of my time hath been spent sub dio. I have served in all weathers, and in all climates, but chiefly in the torrid zone of politics, where the passions of all men are on fire, and where such as have lived the longest, and are thought the happiest, are scarcely able to reconcile themselves to the sultry air of the place. But this warfare is now happily at an end. I have languished these many years for the shade. Thanks to my Lord St. Albans, and another noble lord you know of, I have now gained it. And it is not a small matter, I assure you, shall force me out of this shelter.
Nothing is easier, said I, than for you men of wit to throw a ridicule upon any thing. It is but applying a quaint figure, or a well-turned sentence, and the business is done. But indeed, my best friend, it gives me pain to find you not so much diverting as deceiving yourself with this unseasonable ingenuity. So long as these sallies of fancy were employed only to enliven conversation, or furnish matter for an ode or an epigram, all was very well. But now that you seem disposed to act upon them, you must excuse me if I take the matter a little more seriously. To deal plainly with you, I come to tell you my whole mind on this subject: and, to give what I have to say the greater consequence with you, I must not conceal from you, that I come commissioned by the excellent lord you honour so much, and have just now mentioned, to expostulate in the freest manner with you upon it.
We had continued walking all this time, and were now ascending a sort of natural terras. It led to a small thicket, in the entrance of which was a seat that commanded a pleasant view of the country and the river. Taking me up to it, “Well,” said he, “my good friend, since your purpose in coming hither is so kind, and my Lord St. Albans himself doth me the honour to think my private concerns deserving his particular notice, it becomes me to receive your message with respect, and to debate the matter, since you press it so home upon me, with all possible calmness. But let us, if you please, sit down here. You will find it the most agreeable spot I have to treat you with; and the shade we have about us will not, I suppose, at this hour, be unwelcome.”
And now, turning himself to me, “Let me hear from you, what there is in my retreat to this place, which a wise man can have reason to censure, or which may deserve the disallowance of a friend. I know you come prepared with every argument which men of the world have at any time employed against retirement; and I know your ability to give to each its full force. But look upon this scene before you, and tell me what inducements I can possibly have to quit it for any thing you can promise me in exchange? Is there in that vast labyrinth, you call the world, where so many thousands lose themselves in endless wanderings and perplexities, any corner where the mind can recollect itself so perfectly, where it can attend to its own business, and pursue its proper interests so conveniently, as in this quiet and sequestered spot? Here the passions subside; or, if they continue to agitate, do not however transport the mind with those feverish and vexatious fervours, which distract us in public life. This is the seat of virtue and of reason; here I can fashion my life by the precepts of duty and conscience; and here I have leisure to make acquaintance, that acquaintance which elsewhere is so rarely made, with the ways and works of God.
Think again, my friend. Doth not the genius of the place seize you? Do you not perceive a certain serenity steal in upon you? Doth not the aspect of things around you, the very stillness of this retreat, infuse a content and satisfaction which the world knows nothing of? Tell me, in a word, is there not something like enchantment about us? Do you not find your desires more composed, your purposes more pure, your thoughts more elevated, and more active, since your entrance into this scene?”
He was proceeding in this strain, with an air of perfect enthusiasm, when I broke in upon him with asking, “Whether this was what he called debating the matter calmly with me. Surely,” said I, “this is poetry, or something still more extravagant. You cannot think I come prepared to encounter you in this way. I own myself no match for you at these weapons: which indeed are too fine for my handling, and very unsuitable to my purpose if they were not. The point is not which of us can say the handsomest things, but the truest, on either side of the question. It is, as you said, plain argument, and not rhetorical flourishes, much less poetical raptures, that must decide the matter in debate. Not but a great deal might be said on my side, and, it may be, with more colour of truth, had I the command of an eloquence proper to set it off.