Go on, my friend, in this track; and be an example to the churchmen of our days, that the highest honours of the gown, which I easily foresee are destined to your abilities, are not incompatible with the strictest purity of life, and the most heroic sentiments of integrity and honour. Go, and adorn the dignities which are reserved for you; and remember only in the heights of prosperity to be what you are, to serve the world with vigour, yet so as to indulge with me
“the generous scorn
Of things, for which we were not born[56].”
I began to be a little uneasy at his long sermon, when he broke it off with this couplet. The day by this time was pretty far advanced; and rising from his seat, he proposed to me to walk into his hermitage (so he called his house); where, he said, I should see how a philosopher lived as well as talked. I staid to dine, and spent a good part of the afternoon with him. We discoursed of various matters; but not a word more of what had occasioned this visit. Only he shewed me the complaining poem he had mentioned, and of which, for the pleasure so fine a composition will give you, I here send your lordship a copy. His spirits, he said, were enlivened by the face of an old friend; and indeed I never knew his conversation more easy and chearful[57]; which yet I could not perfectly enjoy for the regret the ill success of my negociation had given me.
I returned to town in the evening, ruminating on what had passed, and resolving to send your lordship an exact account of our conversation. I particularly made a point of suppressing nothing which Mr. Cowley had to say for himself in this debate, however it may sometimes seem to make against me. The whole hath grown under my pen into a greater length than I expected. But your Lordship wished to know the bottom of our friend’s mind; and I thought you would see it more distinctly and clearly in this way, than in any other. I am, my lord, with the most profound respect,
Your Lordship’s most obedient
and faithful servant,
T. Sprat.
THE
COMPLAINT[58].
In a deep vision’s intellectual scene
Beneath a bower for sorrow made,
Th’ uncomfortable shade
Of the black yew’s unlucky green,
Mixt with the mourning willow’s careful gray,
Where reverend Cam cuts out his famous way,
The melancholy Cowley lay:
And lo! a Muse appear’d to’s closed sight,
(The Muses oft in lands of visions play)
Bodied, array’d, and seen by an internal light:
A golden harp with silver strings she bore,
A wonderous hieroglyphic robe she wore,
In which all colours, and all figures were,
That nature, or that fancy can create,
That art can never imitate;
And with loose pride it wanton’d in the air.
In such a dress, in such a well-cloath’d dream,
She us’d of old, near fair Ismenus’ stream,
Pindar her Theban favourite to meet;
A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet.
II.
She touch’d him with her harp, and rais’d him from the ground;
The shaken strings melodiously resound.
Art thou return’d at last, said she,
To this forsaken place and me?
Thou prodigal, who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years, the good estate?
Art thou return’d here to repent too late;
And gather husks of learning up at last,
Now the rich harvest-time of life is past,
And Winter marches on so fast?
But when I meant t’adopt thee for my son,
And did as learn’d a portion thee assign,
As ever any of the mighty Nine
Had to her dearest children done;
When I resolv’d t’exalt thy anointed name,
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame[59];
Thou changeling, thou, bewitch’d with noise and show,
Would’st into courts and cities from me go;
Would’st see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies, and the tumults there.
Thou would’st, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou would’st find, and would’st create:
Business! the frivolous pretence
Of humane lusts to shake off innocence:
Business! the grave impertinence:
Business! the thing which I of all things hate:
Business! the contradiction of thy fate.