Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	life_n	read_v	write_v	3,333	5	5.3999	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39716	The idea of His Highness Oliver, late Lord Protector, &c. with certain brief reflexions on his life / by Richard Fleckno, Esq.	Flecknoe, Richard, d. 1678?	1659 (1659)	Wing F1226; ESTC R6875	19,504	84

THE IDEA of His Highness OLIVER LATE LORD PROTECTOR c. With certain brief Reflexions on His Life By RICHARD FLECKNO Esq. LONDON Printed Anno MDCLIX TO HIS HIGHNESS RICHARD Lord Protector c. My Lord THose who write Books ought to have more regard to their leisures who read them then to their own in writing them this makes me so short in writing this unto your Highnesse which so declares in passing the life and actions of your Highnesse Father of glorious memory as there is scarce any remarkable passage in his life which if it touches not it points not at at least a subject which I am so far from elevating above its height as all my forces can scarcely sustain its weight nor did this deice me from undertaking it muchless the enemies I undertook war against in writing it For the war of Pens continues longer then the war of Swords and grows commonly more sharp and cruel after death until time gives the deciding blow at last and fame alwayes determines it for the conquering side Mean time his Fame has two Enemies to provide against the Enemies of his party the Enemies of his person The first so noble it honors vertue even in an Enemy the last so base as it calumniates it in all and against these chiefly I undertake this war neither is the Age then Vertue less concern'd in it for whilst every one judges according to their own affections and inclinations and the young interpret all to Vitiousness as the old all to Interest Policy and Ambition we shall in time need a Dictionary for Actions as well as Words or else the Language of Truth will be wholly lost and Posterity well may doubt whe'r there ever were any such thing as Vertue and Honesty in the Age To vindicate and clear it from which Aspertion I have writ this Treatise to let Posterity know that as there wanted not some in this Age to do brave and noble things so there wanted not others to celebrate and honour them And this Fame 't is which is the better life of all Heroick persons for short is the space they live in their Bodies here but immense that they live hereafter in their Fames which life only writers can bestow nor can Time hang more plummets on their feet to weigh them down unto oblivion then writers pens add wings unto their Fames to raise them up again to which if mine may add any thing amongst the rest it will be rather my glory then any addition unto his But I forget and destroy with one hand what I would build up with tother in being so long in the Epistle whilst I intend brevity in the work I end then my Lord with the profession and protestation of being always Your Highness Most humble Servant and most obedient Subject Rich. Fleckno PROEMIUM TO THE IDEA AN Idea is a Creature of the mind In the Artificer it regards the future but in the Writer both the present and passed time It is not the matter but the form nor the body but the spirit and quintesence It is more in substance then in bulke and gives you flowers not simply but Alembeck't and distill'd and Gold not in the Or but purified and refin'd Such an Abstract Essence I give you of his Highness Oliver late Lord Protector on whose life I make no other Reflections then as we doe on Pictures excellent well design'd remarking onely the Proportions in generall without examining each Lineament in particular Expect of me then no circumstances of time place nor persons that is for those who write the Annales and History of his life I onely write his Elogiums they shew you the things he did I the man who did those things Mean time I undertake a work I know displeasing and ungratefull to the multitude naturally envious and malicious and more taken with one Satyr then twenty Elogiums pleas'd rather with the imperfections then perfections of men Like Flies leaving sound places to light on soars and such venomous ones as they even render sound places soar with their fly-blowing them Yet this in spight of envy and malice I le say of him That a Greater and more Excellent personage has no where been produc't by this latter Age nor perhaps in our Nation by any former ones And if men anciently have been judged fit for Empire onely for the Greatnesse of their bodies He certainly was most fit for it for the Greatness of his mind But Great men like Great Saints must die ere they are Canoniz'd Living men are busied with considering their faults but dead they have leysure to summe their vertues up As for his for the present I le say no more but only if we may judge of Hercules force by the massiveness of his club we may wel judge how mighty a man he was by his wielding three Kingdomes so easily as he did In alteration of whose Government this we may truly say all that was ill and blameable in the beginning and heat of prosecution was done by others all that was good and laudible perform'd and atchieved by him But of this Strangers and Posterity best can judge For if none can judge well in cases whereof themselves are parties none are competent Iudges of those who govern them And this I 'm sure will be the judgment of Posterity that those are rather Envious who praise him not then Flatterers who do THE IDEA Of his Highness OLIVER late Lord PROTECTOR AS we look on the heads of great Rivers with Reverence whilst we scarce regard the sources of shallow Brooks so we look on the births of Great Persons scarcely regarding the Origin of lesser ones To begin then with his Birth and Parentage He was born of the Ancient Family of the Williams's and Adopted into the noble Family of the Cromwels But whilst others derive him from Principalities I will derive his Principality from him and onely say he was born a Gentleman A name so fully comprehending all that 's great and noble as whosoever would make him more should make him less A Gentleman is one who takes his denomination from his Gentility and Descent lying level in birth to the highest degree of Nobility And as his Descent differences him from the vulgar so by their Ascents he only differs from the Nobility who are rather higher then better then he Whence Princes are rather the Fountaneers then Fountains of honour and rather Artificers of the Channel then Authors of the source since without violencing Nature they cannot derive men higher then their first Origin or Fountain-head Nobility then ads but little to the Gentleman but the Gentleman much unto the man Nor do titles of honour and degrees of Nobility more advantage a worthy Gentleman then degrees of the University do an excellent Schollar they rather declaring what he is then making of him so Whilst he rather honours his degrees then his degrees honour him But since Birth and Parentage without Education are like