Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	earl_n	lord_n	sir_n	21,670	5	6.9416	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A78009	Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English. Now collected into one volume, with a methodicall table of all the letters. 1. 2. 3. and 4th parts. By Sr Richard Baker Knight, and others.; Correspondence. English	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1595-1654.	1654 (1654)	Wing B614; Thomason E1444_1; ESTC R209109	450,799	529

to lose after three score years pennance in the wilderness I wish I could have had the like favour and have died at the time when I was innocent being my self neither valiant nor ambitious I account those wars the best that are the shortest and that though in Paradise there be divers degrees and divers mansions yet there is not any that is not excellent good Conserve onely your goodly maker of Saints and you shall finde some of all sorts I mean of the one and the other Sex Religious and Seculars Gascoignes and French You know well I have appointed you here a Chamber and that you are my debtor of a visite now a whole year if you be a man of your word but I fear me you are not and that as your custom is you will content your self with praising my quiet course of life yet I would have you to flatter at least my spirit though it be but with some light hope of so perfect a contentment promise me you will come and make me happy though you break your promise I shall enjoy at least so much of good and in doing so you shall amuse me though you do not satisfie me I send you all I have of that admirable Incognito of whom there is so much talk and who hath made himself famous now these three years under the name of Petrus Aurelius I cannot for my life finde who he is Mounsieur de Filsac told me lately at Paris that of him that brought the leaves to Printing he could not possibly learn any more than this that he was a man who desires to serve God invisibly And in truth if you knew in what sort he carries his secrecy and with what care and cunning he hides himself you would confess he takes more pains to shun reputation than ambitious men take in running after it For from being a Plagiary to rob others of their glory who refuseth that which is his own and suffers a Phantasme to receive those acclamations and praises which belong to himself This is no man of the common mould even in the judgement of his adversaries and his writings savour not the compositions of this age They are animated with the spirit and vigour of the former times and represent us a Church we never saw Yet it seems in some passages he hath less of Saint Austins sweetness than of Saint Hieroms choler and that he is willinger to do that which justice onely permits him than that which charity counsels him I could wish he had shewed a little more respect to the gray hairs and rare merit of Father Sirmond or rather that he would have dulled the edge of his Arms and dealt with him in a gentler war But there is no means to bridle a provoked valour nor to guide a great force though with a great moderation All Saints are not of one temper it is enough for Religion to cut off vices and to purifie the passions Our moral Divinity acknowledgeth some innocent cholers and it is the beauty of Christs flock that there be Lions amongst the sheep and that as well the sublimest and strongest spirits as the basest and sweetest submit and prostrate themselves to the greatness of Christianity If I had learned nothing in his book but onely to know what respect men owe to a Character reverenced of the Angels I had not lost my time in reading him If Bishops be Princes and if their Dignity be equal or Superiour to Kings shall we make any difficulty to call a Prelate My Lord and esteem him less than a Grand of Spain or than an Earle of England You will tell me more of this at your next meeting and I doubt not setting aside the interest of send it me back when you have read it and forget not the Chapters of honest Bernia I am more than I am able to express At Balzac 15. of October 1634. Sir Your c. To my Lord the Bishop of Nants LETTER XLIX SIR I Am now grown shameless and make no longer any conscience to be troublesom to you But you may thank your own goodness for it which hath from the very first been so ready to me and freely makes me offer of that for which it ought to make be a suitor I send you now four leaves for Ruel and if you please to let three of your own lines bear them company I doubt not but they will have a happy arrival and that the skiff will procure passage for the great vessel But because Fortune her self hath done one half of my discourse and that I have little commerce with any but Latines born I humbly entreat you my Lord to be so good when I am fallen to help me to rise and not suffer me to go astray in a Countrey where you are Prince I know you love your own elections with more than natural tenderness and that you respect me as none of the least of your Creatures This is a cause why to keep me in your favour and to ingage you in my interests I will not tell you to your face that you are the Chrysostome of our Church that you are privy to the most secret intentions of Saint Paul That there is neither Jew nor Gentile that hearing you speak of the greatness and Dignitie of Christianitie doth willinlgy submit himself to follow Christ I will onely say it hath been your will to be my Father and that I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 8. of Jan. 1630. Another to him LETTER L. SIR YOu have a right to all occasions of doing good I see not therefore how I can forbear to offer you one and to the end you may alwayes be meriting of thanks why I should not alwayes be craving new courtesies The bearer of this Letter is my near Kinsman yet our friendship is nearer than our alliance and the knot which Nature made virtue hath tied I humbly entreat your Lordship to let him see you slight not things whereof I make such reckoning and to do that for my sake which you would much willinger do for his own sake if he were known unto you He is a man of mettal and spirit and hath served the King in this Province having also had the honour to be in person before him in very famous actions At this time he is troubled against all right and reason and they that have drawn him from the exercise of his charge to make him walk to Paris have nothing to say but that they do it of purpose to vex him And therefore their manner of fight with him is by flights and retreats and they cast so many bones of difficulty between his Judges and him that it is impossible they should ever come to any issue They are not able to hinder his justification at last but they are able to delay and keep him off a long time You Sir may save him this long journey and may break this Project that Calumny sets on if you please but to

from thence I will acquaint you with it and intreate this savour from you that you will believe I passionatelie am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 June 1635. To Mounsieur Girard Secretary to M. the Duke D' Espernon LETTER IX SIR your last Letters have exceedingly comforted me and you have such things for me that they make me forgetfull of all my miseries With such a friendship I can mocke at ill fortune and it makes me taste contentments which good fortune knowes not of It is true that your absence is a perpetuall cooling Card to my joy and possessing you but in spirit it requires a very strong imagination to desire nothing else Shall we never come to be Citizens of one City Never to be Hermits in the same Desart Shall my Counsayle be alwayes twenty myles from me and must I be alwayes forced to passe two Seas to fetch it when I need it I hope your justice will doe me reason and that Heaven will at last heare the most ardent of all my prayers but in the meane time whilst I stay waiting for so perfect a contentment I would be glad to have of it now and then some little taste if it be not in your power to give your selfe at least lend your selfe for some few dayes and come and sit as supreame President over both my French and Latin I promise you I will never appeale from you to any other onely for this once give me leave to tell you that the word Ludovix which you blame as too new seemes to me a more Poeticall and pleasing word than either the Aloysius of the Italians or our Ludovicus and besides It favours of the Antiquity of our Nation and of the first language of the Gaules witnesse these words Ambiorix Eporedorix Orgetorite Vercingetorix c. In which you see the Analogie to be plaine yet more than this I have an Authority which I am sure you will make no difficultie to allow you know Monsieur Guyet is a great Master in this Art but perhaps you know not that he hath used this very word Ludovix before I used it for I tooke it from these excellent Verses of his Non tulit hoc Ludovix justa puer acer ab ira Et patriae casum sic videamus ait For other matters Sir you may adde to that which was last alledged in the cause of Madam Gourney this passage out of the divine Jerusalem where Aladin calls Clorinda the Intercessour of Sophronia and of her lover Habbian vita Rispose libertade E Nulla a tanto Intercessor se neghi I kisse the hands of that faire creature you love and am withall my soule Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb. 1635. To my Lord the Earl of Port. LETTER X. SIR I have received a letter from you since your being in England but not being able to read the Gentlemans hand that sent it to me for want of a decipherer I have been forced to be uncivill till now and have therefore not answered you because indeed I knew not whom to answer but now that this Gentleman whose name is a mysterie in his letters is by good fortune come againe into this countrey I can by no meanes suffer him to part without some testimony of the account I make of your favour and the desire I have to preserve it by all the possible meanes I can I will make you Sir no studied Protestations nor send complements to a man that is borne in the Countrey of good words I will onely say there are many respects that make your person dear unto me and that besides the consideration of your vertue which gives me just cause to honour you that also of the name you beare and of the ranke you hold are things that exceed the value of indifferencie I love all them that love France and wish well to our great Prince of whom in truth I have heard you speake so worthily that as often as I remember it it stirres me up to doing my duty and to profit by so good an example If it had been seconded in Italy we should have seene all we could have hoped But God himselfe saves none but such as contribute themselves to their salvation Saguntum was taken while the Senatours were deliberating and a wisedome that is too scrupulous commonly doth nothing for feare of doing ill The most part of Italians are themselves the workmen to make their owne setters they lend the Spaniard their blood and their hands to make a slave of their countrey and are the parricides of their mother of whom they might have been the redeemers But of all this we shall talke more at Paris if you come thither this Winter as I am put in hope you will In the meane time doe me the honour to let me have your love and to believe me there is none in the world more truly than I Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XI MY Lord the joy I take in the recoverie of your health is not yet so pure but that it alwayes represents unto me a terrible Image of your last sicknesse The imagination of a danger though past and gone yet makes my memorie afraid and I looke upon it rather in safety than with assurance We missed the losing you but very narrowly and you were upon the poynt to leave us Orphans I speake it seriously and without any flattery at all all the victories we have gotten or shall get would never be able to make us amends for such a losse you wouldd have made our conquest turne to mourning M. the Cardinall would have found something to complaine of in his great felicitie and would have watred his triumph with his tears Let it not be Gods will to lay this crosse upon our time and if it be a crosse inevitable yet let it be deferred to our posteritie It is necessary the Phoenix should live out her age and that the world should be allowed time for enjoying the possession of so profitable and sweet a life as yours It is true the world is not worthy of you but my Lord the world hath need of you your vertue indeed should long since have been crowned but that your example is still necessary and the more happie ones there be in heaven the fewer honest ones will be left upon earth Love therefore your selfe a little for our sakes begin now at last to studie your health which hitherto you have neglected and make a difference hereafter betweene cold and heate betweene good and bad aire betweene meates that are sweet and those that are bitter Though you take no care of your health for your own sake yet you must take care of it for the common good For I beseech you my Lord tell me what should become of the cause of the poore what of the desolation of widdowes what of the innocencie of men oppressed I speake not of the hope of such as hope for

health The reasons I can give of my silence are much juster than I would they were and me thinkes three moneths continuing in a Feaver may well dispense with any obligation whatsoever of a civill life Yet seeing you will needs have me speake I cannot but obey you though I make use of a strangers hand to quarrel with you I cannot endure the dissimulation you shew in doubting of my affection and of the truth of my words I understand no jesting on that side these are Games that I am uncapable to learn and in matter of friendship I am of that tendernesse that I am even wounded with that which is perhaps intended but for a tickling I perceive I have beene complained upon to you but I entreat you to beleeve it hath been upon very false grounds and I require no better justifier than her owne conscience that accuseth mee Within a few dayes I will come my selfe in person and give you an account of all my actions and will trayne my selfe on to Paris in hope to enjoy the happinesse of your companie In the meane time be carefull not to cure the maladie you tell me of which brings us forth such goodly Sonnets and makes so well agree the two greatest enemies that are in Nature I meane Passion and Judgment so I bid you Farewill and am with all my heart Your c. At Balzac 25. August 1620. To Monsieur de Coignet LETTER XLVIII SIR I am much bound unto you for your writing to me and for sending me Newes that exceedingly pleaseth mee You may well thinke I have no minde to crosse my own good and to refuse giving my consent to the Earle of Exceters request To have so illustrious an Interpreter in England is more then a full revenge upon all the petty Scribes that oppose mee in France it is the crowning and triumph of my writings I am not therefore so a Philosopher that I place the honour he doth mee amongst things indifferent but rather to tell you plainly I have perhaps received too sensible a contentment in it and upon the poynt of falling againe into my old desire of glory of which I thought my selfe to have been fully cured I send you a word which I entreat you to deliver to him which shall witnesse for me how deare and glorious the markes he gives me of his love and account are unto me Otherwise Sir I doubt not but I owe a great part of this good fortune to the good opinion you have of me which is to be seene in every line of your Letter and that you have confirmed the English in this Error which is so much in my favour Onely I entreat you never to seeke to free them of this errour but so to deale with them that if you convert them from other it may still be with reservation of this The truth in question is of so small importance that it deserves not any curious examination and in which to be in a wrong beliefe makes not a man to be either lesse honest or more unfortunate Never therefore make scruple to oblige me seeing you shall oblige a thankfull man and one who is Sir Your c. At Balzac 12. June 1629. To Monsieur de Neusuic LETTER XLIX SIR If I were only blind I would try to make some answer to the good words of your Letter but the paine which my ill eyes put me to makes me uncapable of this pleasing contention and I cannot draw from my head in the state it now is any thing else but Water and Waxe And besides the unhappie blindnesse I speake of I am in such sort overflowed with Rheumes that if it were in the time of the old Metamorphoses I thinke verily I should be turned into a Fountaine and become the subject of some new Fable I have lost as well my smelling as my taste my Nose can make no difference betweene Spanish Leather and an old Cowes hide and I sneeze so continually that all my conversation is but to say I thanke you to them that say God helpe you Being in this estate doe you not wonder I write unto you and have the boldnesse to be sending Letters In truth never complement cost me so deare as this and if I would make use of the priviledge of sicke men I might very justly require a Dispensation but I had not the power to let your servant goe away without telling you that you are a very honest Impostour and that the Periguran you send is the most refined Frenchman that ever ranne afoot to Paris It must needs be that the people of your Village is a Colonie of the Louver that hath preserved the first puritie of their language amidst the corruption of their Neighbours There never were such fine things written upon the banke of Dordoune at least not since the death of de Montaigue yet I esteeme them not so much because they are so fine as because they come from you whose I passionately am At Balzac 25. Jan. 1633. Sir Your c. To Madam Desloges LETTER L. MAdam I am alwayes of your minde and like not Ladies that would be Cavaliers There are certain bounds that part us and mark us out our several duties and conditions which neither you nor we can lawfully passe And the lawes of Decencie are so ancient that they seeme to be a part of the ancient religion Moses hath extended the commandements of God even to the distinction of your apparell and ours and you know he expresly forbids to disguise our selves in one anothers cloathes Women must be altogether women the vertues of our sex are not the vertues of theirs and the more they seek to imitate men the more they degenerate from their owne kinde We have had some women amongst us that would ride Spanish horses would discharge Pistols and would be parties in maintaining quarrels M. the Marshall Scomberg shewed me once a letter which he writ to a Gentlewoman of at the end whereof are these words I kisse the hands of this valiant and pleasing Lady that is your second in the day and your wife at night This Lady might parhaps be valiant but to my humour she could not be pleasing If she had had a beard she could not have had a greater fault Women that are valiant are as much to blame as men that are cowards And it is as unseemly for Ladies to weare swords by their sides as for Gentlemen to have glasses hanging at their girdles I professe my selfe an enemy Madam to these usurpations of one sex upon another It strikes me with a kinde of horror when I read in histories of the ancient women Fencers whom the Romanes beheld with such pleasure in their Amphitheater and I account not Amazons in the number of women but of Monsters and Prodigies Sweetnesse and tendernesse are the qualities that belong to you and will your she Friend give over her claime to these that is to the succession of her mother and the priviledges of