Plantations either for His Master or Himself to draw his Trees out of some Nursery that is upon a leaner and lighter Soyl than his own where he removes them without this care they will not thrive in several years perhaps never and must make way for new which should be avoided all that can be for Life is too short and uncertain to be renewing often your Plantations The Walls of your Garden without their Furniture look as ill as those of your House so that you cannot dig up your Garden too often nor too seldom cut it down I may perhaps be allowed to know something of this Trade since I have so long allowed my self to be good for nothing else which few Men will do or enjoy their Gardens without often looking abroad to see how other matters play what Motions in the State and what Invitations they may hope for into other Scenes For my own part as the Country Life and this part of it more particularly were the Inclination of my Youth it self so they are the Pleasure of my Age and I can truly say that among many great Employments that have fallen to my share I have never asked or sought for any one of them but have often endeavoured to escape from them into the ease and freedom of a private Scene where a Man may go his own way and his own Pace in the common Paths or Circles of Life Inter cunct a leges percunct abere doctos Qua ratione queas traducere leniter aevum Quid curas minuat quid te tibi reddat amicum Quid purè tranquillet honos an dulce lucellum An secretum iter fallentis semita vitae But above all the Learned read and ask By what means you may gently pass your Age What lessens Care what makes thee thine own Friend What truly calms the Mind Honour or Wealth Or else a private path of stealing Life These are Questions that a Man ought at least to ask himself whether he asks others or no and to choose his course of Life rather by his own Humour and Temper than by common Accidents or Advice of Friends at least if the Spanish Proverb be true That a Fool knows more in his own House than a Wise Man in anothers The measure of choosing well is Whether a Man likes what he has chosen which I thank God has befallen me and though among the Follies of my Life Building and Planting have not been the least and have cost me more than I have the confidence to own yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction of this Retreat where since my Resolution taken of never entring again into any Publick Employments I have passed Five Years without ever going once to Town though I am almost in sight of it and have a House there always ready to receive me Nor has this been any sort of Affectation as some have thought it but a meer want of Desire or Humour to make so small a Remove for when I am in this Corner I can truly say with Horace Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus Quid sentire putas quid credis amice precare Sit mihi quod nunc est etiam minus ut mihi vivam Quod superest aevi si quid superesse volent Dii Sit bona librorum provisae frugis in annum Copia ne dubiae fluitem spe pendulus horae Hoc satis est orasse Jovem qui donat aufert Me when the cold Digentian Stream revives What does my Friend believe I think or ask Let me yet less possess so I may live What e're of Life remains unto my self May I have Books enough and one years store Not to depend upon each doubtful hour This is enough of mighty Jove to pray Who as He pleases gives and takes away That which makes the Cares of Gardning more necessary or at least more excusable is that all Men eat Fruit that can get it so as the choice is only whether one will eat good or ill and between these the difference is not greater in point of tast and delicacy than it is of Health For the first I will only say That whoever has used to eat good will do very great penance when he comes to ill And for the other I think nothing is more evident than as ill or unripe Fruit is extreamly unwholsom and causes so many untimely deaths or so much sickness about Autumn in all great Cities where 't is greedily sold as well as eaten so no part of Dyet in any season is so healthful so natural and so agreeable to the Stomach as good and well ripened Fruits for this I make the measure of their being good and let the kinds be what they will if they will not ripen perfectly in our Clymat they are better never planted or never eaten I can say it for my self at least and all my Friends that the season of Summer Fruits is ever the season of health with us which I reckon from the beginning of June to the end of September and for all Sicknesses of the Stomach from which most others are judged to proceed I do not think any that are like me the most subject to them shall complain when ever they eat thirty or forty Cherries before Meals or the like proportion of white Figs soft Peaches or grapes perfectly ripe But these after Michaelmas I do not think wholsom with us unless attended by some fit of hot and dry Weather more than is usual after that Season When the Frosts or the Rain have taken them they grow dangerous and nothing but the Autumn and Winter Pears are to be reckoned in season besides Apples which with Cherries are of all others the most innocent Food and perhaps the best Physick Now whoever will be sure to eat good Fruit must do it out of a Garden of His own for besides the choice so necessary in the sorts the soyl and so many other circumstances that go to compose a good Garden or produce good Fruits there is something very nice in gathering them and choosing the best even from the same Tree The best sorts of all among us which I esteem the white Figs and the soft Peaches will not carry without suffering The best Fruit that is bought has no more of the Masters care than how to raise the greatest gains His business is to have as much Fruit as He can upon as few Trees whereas the way to have it excellent is to have but little upon many Trees So that for all things out of a Garden either of Sallads or Fruits a Poor Man will eat better that has one of His own than a Rich Man that has none And this is all I think of necessary and useful to be known upon this Subject ESSAY III. Of Heroick Virtue AMONG all the Endowments of Nature or Improvements of Art wherein Men have excelled and distinguished themselves most in the World there are two only that have
causes both within and without which seem obvious enough The first a neglect in the observance of some of these Orders which were essential to the Constitutions of their Government For after the Conquest of Cyprus and the example of Selim's Intemperance in those and other Wines That Custom and Humour prevailed against their Laws of Abstinence in that point so severely enjoyned by Mahomet and so long observed among all his Followers And tho' the Turks and Janizaries endeavoured to avoid the Scandal and Punishment by drinking in private yet they felt the effects in their Bodies and in their Humours whereof the last needs no inflaming among such hot Tempers and their Bodies are weakened by this Intemperance joyned to their abandoned Luxury in point of Women Besides the Institution of Janizaries has been much altered by the Corruption of Officers who have long suffered the Christians to buy off that Tribute of their Children and the Turks to purchase the preferment of theirs into that Order for Mony by which means the choice of this Militia is not made from the strongest and most warlike Bodies of Men but from the Purses of the Parents or Friends These two Distempers have produced another much greater and more fatal than both which is the mutinous Humour of this Body of Janizâ—ries who finding their own Strength began to make what Changes they pleased in the State till having been long flush'd with the Blood of the Basha's and Visiers they made bold at last with that of their Princes themselves and having deposed and strangled Ibrahim they set up his Son the present Emperor then a Child But the Distemper ended not there they fell into new Factions changed and murthered several Visiers and divided into so powerful Parties and with so fierce Contentions that the Bassa of Aleppo with an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men set up for himself tho' under pretence of a counterfeit Son of Morat and caused such a Convulsion of this mighty State that the Ottoman Race had ended if this bold Adventurer had not upon Confidence in the Faith of a Treaty been surprized and strangled by order of old Cuperly then newly come to be Grand Visier and absolute in the Government This Man entring the Ministry at fourscore years old cruel by Nature and hardned by Age to allay the Heat of Blood in that distemper'd Body of the Janizaries and the other Troops cut off near Forty Thousand of them in three years time by private suddain and violent Executions without Form of Laws or Tryals or hearing any sorts of Pleas or Defences His Son succeeding in the place of Grand Visier found the Empire so dispirited by his Fathers Cruelty and the Militia remaining so spited and distemper'd breathing new Commotions and Revenges that he diverted the Humour by an easie War upon the Venetians Transilvanians or the remainders of Hungary till by Temper and Conduct he had closed the Wounds which his Father had left bleeding and restored the Strength of the Ottoman Empire to that Degree that the succeeding Visier invaded Germany though against the Faith of Treaties or of a Truce not expired and at last besieged Vienna which is a Story too fresh and too known to be told here Another Reason has been the neglect of their Marine Affairs or of their former Greatness at Sea so as for many years they hardly pretend to any Successes on that Element but commonly say That God has given the Earth to the Mussulmans and the Sea to the Christians The last I shall observe is the excessive use of Opium with which they seek to repair the want of Wine and to divert their Melancholly Reflections upon the ill Condition of their Fortunes and Lives ever uncertain and depending upon the Will or Caprice of the Grand Seigniors or of the Grand Visiers Humor and Commands but the effect of this Opium is very transitory and tho' it allays for the present all Melancholly Fumes and Thoughts yet when the Operation is past they return again which makes the use of it so often repeated and nothing more dispirits and enervates both the Body and the Mind of those that frequently use it The external Reason of the Stand made this last Century in the Growth of the Turkish Empire seems to have been their having before extended it till they came to such strong Bars as were not to be broken For they were grown to border upon the Persian Empire to the East upon the Tartars to the North upon the Aethiopians to the South and upon the German Empire to the West and turned their prospect this way as the easiest and most plausible being against a Christian State Now this Empire of Germany consisting of such large Territories such Numbers and Bodies of Warlike Men when united in any common Cause or Quarrel seems as strongly constituted for Defence as the Turkish is for Invasion or Conquest For being composed of many Civil and Moderate Governments under Legal Princes or Free States the Subjects are all fond of their Liberties and Laws and abhor the falling under any Foreign or Arbitrary Dominions and in such a common Cause seem to be invincible On the contrary the Turkish Territories being all enslaved and thereby in a manner desolated have no Force but that of their standing Armies and their People in general care not either for the progress of their Victories abroad nor even for the Defence of their own Countries since they are sure to lose nothing but may hope reasonably to gain by any Change of Master or of Government which makes that Empire the worse constituted that can be for Defence upon any great Misfortune to their Armies The Effect of these two different Constitutions had been seen and felt in all probability to the wonder of the whole World in these late Revolutions if the Divine Decrees had not crossed all Human Appearances For the Grand Visier might certainly have taken Vienna before the Confederate Princes could have united for its Relief if the Opinion of vast Treasures there assembled for shelter from all the adjacent parts had not given him a passionate desire to take the Town by Composition rather than by Storm which must have left all its Wealth a Prey to the Soldiers and not to the General If the Turks had possessed this Bulwark of Christendom I do not conceive what could have hindered them from being Masters immediately of Austria and all its depending Provinces nor in another year of all Italy or of the Southern Provinces of Germany as they should have chosen to carry on their Invasion or of both in two or three years time and how fatal this might have been to the rest of Christendom or how it might have enlarged the Turkish Dominions is easie to conjecture On th' other side after the Defeat of the Grand Visiers Army his Death and that of so many brave Basha's and other Captains by the usual Humour and Faction of that bloody Court After such Slaughters
is used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call Ingenio and the French Esprit both from the Latin but I think Wit more peculiarly signifies that of Poetry as may occur upon Remarks of the Runick Language To the first of these are Attributed the Inventions or Productions of things generally esteemed the most necessary useful or profitable to Human Life either in private Possessions or publick Institutions To the other those Writings or Discourses which are the most Pleasing or Entertaining to all that read or hear them Yet according to the Opinion of those that link them together As the Inventions of Sages and Law-givers themselves do please as well as profit those who approve and follow them so those of Poets Instruct and Profit as well as Please such as are Conversant in them and the happy mixture of both these makes the excellency in both those compositions and has given occasion for esteeming or at least for calling Heroick Virtue and Poetry Divine The Names given to Poets both in Greek and Latin express the same Opinion of them in those Nations The Greek signifying Makers or Creators such as raise admirable Frames and Fabricks out of nothing which strike with wonder and with pleasure the Eyes and Imaginations of those who behold them The Latin makes the same Word common to Poets and to Prophets Now as Creation is the first Attribute and highest Operation of Divine Power so is Prophecy the greatest Emanation of Divine Spirit in the World As the Names in those Two Learned Languages so the Causes of Poetry are by the Writers of them made to be Divine and to proceed from a Coelestial Fire or Divine Inspiration and by the vulgar Opinions recited or related to in many passages of those Authors the Effects of Poetry were likewise thought Divine and Supernatural and Power of Charms and Enchantments were ascribed to it Carmina vel Coelo possunt deducere Lunam Carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulessis Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur Anguis But I can easily admire Poetry and yet without adoring it I can allow it to arise from the greatest Excellency of natural Temper or the greatest Race of Native Genius without exceeding the reach of what is Human or giving it any Approaches of Divinity which is I doubt debased or dishonoured by ascribing to it any thing that is in the compass of our Action or even Comprehension unless it be raised by an immediate influence from it self I cannot allow Poetry to be more Divine in its effects than in its causes or any Operation produced by it to be more than purely natural or to deserve any other sort of wonder than those of Musick or of Natural Magick however any of them have appeared to minds little Versed in the Speculations of Nature of occult Qualities and the force of Numbers or of Sounds Whoever talks of drawing down the Moon from Heaven by force of Verses or of Charms either believes not himself or too easily believes what others told him or perhaps follows an Opinion begun by the Practise of some Poet upon the facility of some People who knowing the time when an Ecclypse would happen told them he would by his Charms call down the Moon at such an hour and was by them thought to have performed it When I read that Charming Description in Virgil's Eight Ecâ—logue of all sorts of Charms and Fascinations by Verses by Images by Knots by Numbers by Fire by Hearbs imployed upon occasion of a violent Passion from a jealous or disappointed Love I have recourse to the strong Impression of Fables and of Poetry to the easy mistakes of Popular Opinions to the Force of Imagination to the Secret Virtues of several Hearbs and to the Powers of Sounds And I am sorry the Natural History or Account of Fascination has not imployed the Pen of some Person of such excellent Wit and deep Thought and Learning as Gasaubon who Writ that curious and useful Treatise of Enthusiasm and by it discovered the hidden or mistaken Sources of that Delusion so frequent in all Regions and Religions of the World and which had so fatally spread over our Country in that Age in which this Treatise was so seasonably published 'T is much to be lamented That he lived not to compleat that Work in the Second Part he promised or that his Friends neglected the publishing it if it were left in Papers though loose and unfinished I think a clear Account of Enthusiasm and Fascination from their natural Causes would very much deserve from Mankind in general as well as from the Common-wealth of Learning might perhaps prevent many publick disorders and save the Life 's of many innocent deluded or deluding People who suffer so frequently upon Account of Witches and Wizards I have seen many miserable Examples of this kind in my youth at home and tho the Humor or Fashion be a good deal worn out of the World within Thirty or Forty Years past yet it still remain in several remote Parts of Germany Sueden and some other Countries But to return to the Charms of Poetry if the forsaken Lover in that Ecclogue of Virgil had expected onely from the Force of her Verses or her Charms what is the Burthen of the Song To bring Daphnis home from the Town where he was gone and engaged in a new Amour if she had pretended onely to revive an old fainting Flame or to damp a new one that was kindling in his Breast she might for ought I know have compassed such Ends by the Power of such Charms and without other than very Natural Enchantments For there is no Question but true Poetry may have the Force to raise Passions and to allay them to change and to extinguish them to temper Joy and Grief to raise Love and Fear nay to turn Fear into Boldness and Love into Indifference and into Hatred it self and I easily believe That the disheartened Spartans were new animated and recovered their lost Courage by the Songs of Tyrtaeus that the Cruelty and Revenge of Phalaris were changed by the Odes of Stesichorus into the greatest Kindness and Esteem and that many men were as passionately Enamoured by the Charms of Sappho's Wit and Poetry as by those of Beauty in Flora or Thais for 't is not onely Beauty gives Love but Love gives Beauty to the Object that raises it and if the Possession be strong enough let it come from what it will there is always Beauty enough in the Person that gives it Nor is it any great Wonder that such Force should be found in Poetry since in it are assembled all the Powers of Eloquence of Musick and of Picture which are all allowed to make so strong Impressions upon Humane Minds How far Men have been affected with all or any of these needs little Proof or Testimony The Examples have been known enough in Greece and in Italy where some have fallen down right in Love with the Ravishing Beauties of a