Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	age_n	die_v	year_n	6,258	5	4.9578	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62320	The unexpected choice a novel / by Monsieur Scarron ; rendred into English, with addition and advantage, by John Davies of Kidwelly.; Châtinient de l'avarice. English	Scarron, Monsieur, 1610-1660.; Davies, John, 1625-1693.	1670 (1670)	Wing S837; ESTC R13680	49,891	277

as to what I had to say of this late publication of the present Novel But another complaint I have to make against the Posthumous Editions of Monsieur Scarron's Works is that I find not in any of them a perfect Catalogue of the Pieces written by him of which defect I may have occasion to say more elsewhere And lastly whereas it is not unusual in Prefaces to make some promise of what else may be retriv'd of Authours whose precedent Labours have been well receiv'd I am here to acquaint the Ingenious Novelists and other Lovers of the Productions of Monsieur Scarron that there is yet something of his upon the Stocks which will be ready to be launch'd out in the English Language some time the next Term without any Proviso upon the kind or unkind reception of this J. D. THE VNEXPECTED CHOICE A Novel By Monsieur Scarron THough it be the first requisite in the writing of a story to begin with the circumstance of Time yet must I who am a man of an humour by my self and have always pretended to greater sincerity then any that ever employ'd themselves in writing Novels acknowledge my self at a loss as to this particular can only say that what I am going to relate happen'd during the time that Naples was govern'd by Kings Under one of those named if my instructions deceive me not Alphonso there lived one Leonard de S. Severin Prince of Tarentum one of the chiefest Grandees of the Kingdom and the most eminent for Military Affairs of his time To the great regret of all lovers of Heroick Spirits this excellent person dies in the Summer of his Age and noble exploits and leaves the Principality of Tarentum to an only Daughter named Matilda of whom I find one very pleasant remark whereof I think it my duty to give the Reader a strict account to wit that the very day of her Father's death she had been upon the Theatre of this World just sixteen years and a half wanting eleven weeks and consequently that from the time that her Parents made use of the means to get her we may account much about seaventeen years This young Princess was born or begot it matters not much whether under so benevolent a Constellation as if a Society of Astrologers had minuted either the coition or the nativity to her advantage only without any communication of its influences to others that might possibly come into the World at the same time But whether we are so much oblig'd to the stars for their influences as those Gentlemen tell us or not certain it is that common fame gave it out of Matilda that she was beautiful as an Angel and that this beauty lest it might dazzle such as beheld it was surrounded by so extraordinary a mildness and sweetness of nature as gave occasion to such as were unacquainted with the strangeness of her ingenuity to suspect her being at a great distance from it Her Father having no other and out of hopes of any more Children had long before his death promised her in marriage to Prospero Prince of Salerna This Prospero was a person of an insolent and very incompliant humour and yet the pattern of mildness and serenity Matilda by reason of her often seeing of him and bearing with his imperious treatment of her had brought her self to such a custom of loving and fearing him that there was never any slave so absolutely dependent on the disposal of a Master as this young Princess was on that of old Prospero for in comparison of a person so young as Matilda I may justly so call a man who trebled her Age that is wanted not much of compleating a Jubilee The Love she bore this superannuated Lover might well be called a certain awe and submission begot by custom rather then the effect of any inclination and yet however it might be called it was so full of sincerity as that which he bort her was of self-interest Not but that he had a kindness and affection for her and that to as high a degree as possibly he could have and in that he did no more then what any other might have done as well since she was the most amiable person in the World but he was of his own nature one that was incapable of being amorous to any great height and in the person to whom he directed his affections setting a value on her merit and beauty distinct from that due to her upon the account of her wealth According to this Character of him his addresses should have been very importunate to Matilda and yet he was so fortunate or rather she so easily satisfy'd that though he had not for her all the respects and complyances requisite in a person that knows how to love he nevertheless became absolute Master of her affections and by accustoming her to his ill humours brought her to think them the more supportable He alwayes found fault with whatever she did and was perpetually persecuting her with those instructions which grave persons are apt to give to young people and which the latter so unkindly entertain In a word he must have been more troublesome to her then an ill-natur'd Governess if she could have found any thing to quarrel at in a person whom she truly lov'd This indeed must be acknowledg'd to his commendation that when he was in a good humour he entertain'd her with pleasant stories of the old Court he play'd on the Guitar before her and express'd his activity in the footing of a Saraband His age I gave an account of before which was that if he had alienated his Patrimony he was within two years of his restauration according to the Jewish Law-giver There was little to be objected against his person he was very neat and modish in his Cloaths but above all extreamly curious in his Periwiggs a clear argument that he had but little hair of his own what service soever he may have lost it in Nor was he negligent in ordering his teeth for the greater beauty of them only it might be said that time which shortens other things had made them somewhat longer then they were twenty or thirty years before He also took a great deal of pains to exceed others in the whiteness and delicacy of his hands and suffer'd the nail of the little finger of his left hand to grow to a very great length which he thought the finest piece of gallantry in the World for which I cannot imagine what reason he might have unless it were to distinguish him from all others Moreover he was a great Artist in the disposing and intermixture of his Feathers and Ribbands very punctual in the observance of some devotion at night went alwayes persum'd and his Pockets were never unfurnish'd with somewhat to eat and Verses to recite and he forgot not to bring along with him some wretched Copies of his own production As for new Songs and whatever were A la mode of that kind he

LICENSED Aug. 25. 1669. Roger L'Estrange THE VNEXPECTED CHOICE A NOVEL BY Monsieur SCARRON Rendred into English with Addition and Advantage By JOHN DAVIES of Kidwelly Gent. LONDON Printed for John Martyn at the Sign of the Bell without Temple-Bar 1670. TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL AND Most Accomplish'd THOMAS STANLEY Esq IF we may credit the dictates of Venerable Astrology we are to impute the happy or unhappy conduct of our Lives to the benevolence or malignancy of those Aspects which guide our Nativities What Pieces of the most Comical and most Burlesque Monsieur SCARRON have come forth in my Dress I fell upon under your Roof and they had their Birth in English under your Patronage and accordingly prov'd fortunate in the World But since in the production of the least Effect there is a general concurrence of all natural Causes I am to attribute that success besides the precedent Direction to the just perswasions of the more ingenious who voted something of more then ordinary excellency in what they saw Dedicated to so precious a name as STANLEY When the former NOVELS came first abroad you were acting Lord Chancellour among the Ancient Philosophers assigning the several Sects their proper Sentiments and Opinions and in a Decree of Two large Volumes deciding all the differences between them But This if I am rightly inform'd will find you consulting the Oracles of our Municipal Laws of which Study since you have overcome the severity I am only to wish you the Sweetness and Advantages It were easie for me to apologize for the smallness of the Present I now make you by alledging that Books like Essences derive not their value from Quantity but Vertues and that a little Pill or Cordial prescrib'd by a HARVEY or SCARBOROVGH outvy in esteem all the voluminous Recipe's of the ordinary Class of Physicians But I would rather let the World know by this Address that your Kindnesses to me have begot this Familiarity that they have excited in me a presumption of your Acceptance though I waited on you with the Copy of a meaner Original and that I am notwithstanding this Confidence with the greatest submissions and respects Honoured Sir Your most humble and much obliged Servant J. DAVIES TO ALL INGENIOUS NOVELISTS Gentlemen PRefaces Advertisements and whatever else is preliminary to mens Works seem to be certain Supererogations whereby Authours would inveigle their Readers into a greater conceit thereof The Motives to this Devotion I find to be different suitably to the diversity of mens humours Some out of a generous inclination unwilling to omit any thing of ceremony or complement when they court the publick Eye think it but requisite by this means to excite a kind of previous satisfaction in those whom they would oblige to the perusal of their Labours Others through the contagion of Example have heightned the Civility into an Obligation and conceit it incumbent on them to usher in their Discourses with some commendatory account thereof as if they would represent the pleasantness of a Country by a Landskip of it Others again do it out of complyance with the clamorous desires of the Book-seller who flatters himself with the hope of good success in his Adventure upon the elaborateness of what is introductory to his Book For my part what I now do in this kind proceeds not strictly from any of these Motives As for my Productions they who know me know also that I have not been guilty of those profusions in point of advertisement as might cajole many into a perusal of them but have left them without much preoccupant recommendation to stand or fall by their own merit And as to the Venders of them 't is only to be wish'd their Civilities had born some proportion to the Advantages they have made thereby What then occasions the present Trouble This that I thought it convenient to give some account of this so late obstetrication of one Brother so long after the first second and third Births in the English Tongue of seven others and that within the space of seven years Monsteur SCARRON a person the most eminent of this last Age for the humour of his writing hath betray'd therein a certain Drollery or if I may so express it Burlesquery of Wit transcending all others who offer'd at any thing in that kind and what made him the more remarkable was that he did it amidst the perpetual torments of Chronical Diseases Among others he fell upon the subject of NOVELS wherein he prov'd so fortunate that had he written Conturies of them divertive Inclinations would never have complain'd of a glut Of this there cannot be a greater demonstration then the kind entertainment they have met with in our Language The first Three which came to my hands and by that means into English were communicated to me by a Lady who dy'd young the Lustre of her Age and Sex Mrs. Catharine Philips publish'd under the Titles of The FRUITLESSE PRECAUTION The HYPOCRITES The INNOCENT ADULTERY Afterwards lighting on Monsieur SCARRON'S COMICAL ROMANCE since ingeniously Englished by another Hand I added the four others I found there to wit The INVISIBLE MISTRESSE The TRA-PANNER TRAPANN'D The JUDG in his own CAUSE and The CHASTISEMENT of AVARICE which put to the other Three make up the Seven Elder Brothers mentioned before How this last on which I have bestow'd the Title of The UNEXPECTED CHOICE came to ly dormant so long I cannot tell and only think it imputable to their precipitancy who printing his Works since his death and not having it by them put out what Collections they could hastily make to get the start of others whom they suspected to be engag'd upon the same design So that this last appeared not in any collected Edition of his Works till that printed in the Year 1668. wherein I find it added to the three former and so making up one Volume of the six into which all his Works are now divided Meeting with it thus and thereupon reflecting how kindly the others had been redeiv'd here so as in few years to come to a third Impression now sold by Thomas Basset at the George in Fleet-stree I could do no less then supply the place of a transplanting Father to this as I had done to the rest and to send him abroad like another Joseph to see how his Brethren did yet without any presumption of his attaining such Grandeur as that his Elders should bow to him and acknowledge his Supremacy And observing withal that there was not any thing more of that kind to be had of Monsieur Scarron's at least according to that Collection of his Works I have ventur'd to give it what Additions I could Whence it comes that in the Title I affirm it to be English'd with much Addition and Advantage which if any shall think much to credit that is are Sceptical as to my Sincerity let them pursue their own satisfaction by consulting the Original And thus have I acquitted my self