Selected quad for the lemma: order_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
order_n	deceive_v	example_n	great_a	16	3	2.1187	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A02322	Nevv epistles of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English, by Sr. Richard Baker Knight. Being the second and third volumes; Correspondence. English. Selections	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1597-1654.; Marshall, William, fl. 1617-1650, engraver.; Baker, Richard, Sir, 1568-1645.	1638 (1638)	STC 12454; ESTC S103515	233,613	520

forbeare the Pope for M. the Cardinalls sake one of the Princes of his Court These are respects you ought to have untill your conversion furnish you with other more religious and change this your honest civilitie into a true devotion If we be not bound to speake of mens-honour reverently yet we are bound to speak seriously and even at this day we call Lucian an Atheist for scoffing at those Gods who we know were false For the rest Sir I pray take heede you shew not my Letter to he would give me a terrible checke in behalfe of hee would not indure I should speake so insolently of an Author approved by the Academie De gli insensati de Perouse and indeede I had not spoken as I did but that I dare trust your silence and know that to discover a secret to you is to hide it Make much of this rare vertue and never leave and be pleased to beleeve me that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 13. Iune 1633. To the same another LETTER XXXIIII SIR I am going to a place where in speaking good of you I shall finde no contradiction and where your vertue is so well knowne that if I say nothing of it but what I know I am sure I shall tell no newes I bring along with me the last Letter you writ unto me and meane to bee earnestly intreated by Mounsieur before I yeeld to grant him a Coppy As for Madam shee should entertaine an enemy upon this passeport and though shee were resolved to give me no audience yet shee would never deny it to the reader of your writings I know of what account you are in her heart and how much I ought to feare least all the roome there be taken up before hand with your favour Yet such opinion I have of her justice that I willingly make her Arbitratour of our difference and require her to tell whether she think I have done wrong to in desiring him to give over his going to Law and to passe the rest of his dayes in more quiet and sweet imployments The art of jeasting whereof I speake is no enemy to the art of morality whereof you speake rather it is the most subtle and most antient way of retailing it And that which would fright men being used in the naturall forme delights and winnes them sometimes being used under a more pleasing maske A wisedome that is dry and altogether raw is it for the heart it must have a little seasoning such a kind of sawce as Socrates was wont to make it that Socrates I say whom all the Families of Philosophers account their Founder and acknowledge for their Patriarch The story sayes he never used to speake in earnest and the age hee lived in called him the feoffer In Platoes Booke you shall finde little else of him but jeasting with disorderly persons you shall see him counterfet a Lover and a Drunkard thereby to claw them whom he would take He shunnes the stile of the Dogmatists or to speake definitively of things as thinking it an instrument of Tyranny and a yoake that oppresseth our libertie In short he handles serious matters so little seriously that hee seemes to thinke the shortest way to perswade was to please and that vertue had neede of delight to make way for her into the soule Since his time there have come men who contented not themselves with laughing but make profession of nothing else and have made it their recreation to play upon all the actions of humane life Others have disguised themselves into Courtiers and Poets and left their Dilemmaes and their Syllogismes to turne jcasters and to get audience in privie Chambers Wee see then the world had not alwayes beene sad before Ariosto and Bernia came into it they were not the men that brought it first to be merry Ieasting is no new invention it was the first trade that wise men used who thereby made themselves sociable amongst the people Theophrastus who succeeded Aristotle thought it no disparagemen●… to Philosophie nor that there was in it any uncomlinesse unfit for his schoole Lycaeum he is excellent at descriptions and counterfeitings and his Characters are as so many Commedies but that they bee not divided into Acts and Senes and that they represent but onely one person Seneca as solemne and of as sullen humour as he was otherwise yet once in his life would needs bee merry and hath left us that admirable Apotheosis of Claudius which if it were lost I would with all my heart give one of his bookes de Beneficiis to recover againe and a much greater ransome if it were possible to get it entire No doubt but you have heard speake of the Caesars of the Emperour Iulian that is to say of the sports of a severe man and of the mirth of a melancholicke man and from whence thinke you had the Menippaean Satyrs their names Things so much esteemed of by antiquity and under which title the learned Varro comprised all wisedome divine and humane even from Menippus the Philosopher who was of a Sect so austere and so great an enemie to vice that Iustus lipsius doubts not to set it in comparison with the most strict and reformed order of the Church I am much deceived but Madam will not bee found so scrupulous as you and not give her voyce in favour of an opinion authorised by so great examples And indeede Sir why should you not like that our friend should reserve some mirth and some pleasure for his old age and having declaimed and disputed abroad all day should come at night to have some merry talke in his owne lodging why should you thinke it amisse that after so many warres and cumbats I should counsaile him to refresh himselfe with a more easie and lesse violent kinde of writing and to afford us such wares as may bee received as well at Rome as at Geneva These thirty yeares he hath bin a Fencer upon Paper hath furnished all Europe with such spectacles why should hee not now give over a quarrell that he is never able to compose He may in my opinion honestly say it is enough and content himselfe to have outlived his old adversaries without staying to looke for new Having had to doe with Mounsieur Coeffeteau and with Cardinall Perron it would bee a shame for him to meddle now with a dizzy headed father or with the Anticke of Roan and a poore ambition it would be in my judgement to erect Trophies of two such broken Bables it were better hee left individualls and fell to judge of species in generall and that he would consider other mens follies without partaking of them It were better to discredit vice by scorne then to give it reputation by invectives and to laugh with successe then to put himselfe in Choler without profit Though there be many sorts of disciplining men and correcting their manners yet I for my part am for this sort and finde nothing so excellent

cause that every weeke we make a feast upon the day of your comming to Balzac Et ut tibi tanquam futuro in posterum loci Genio non uno poculo libetur If this kinde of acknowledgement will content you I shall perfectly acquit my selfe of performing my duty having learned in Lorraine and the Low Countries the meanes of testifying that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 6. of Iune 1633. Another to him LETTER XXVII SIR though I know the good deserts of are not unknowne unto you and that you neede no forreigne commendation to increase your respects towards him yet I cannot hold from doing a thing superfluous and assure you by these few lines that it will be no blemish to your judgement to let him have your testimony of his pietie Ever since the time he renounced his errour hee hath continued firme and stedfast in the doctrine you taught him of an erronious Christian you made him an Orthodox and your hand is too happy to plant any thing that doth not prosper He is therefore your workemanship in Christ Iesus and otherwise so perfect a friend of mine that I know not if in the order of my affections I ought not to set him in equall ranke with my owne brother This at least I know that the least of his businesses is the greatest of mine and I will not onely part your favour betweene him and me but will become your debtour for the whole my selfe alone I am now polishing those writings which I had condemned but that you asked their pardon and since it is your will they should not perish I revoke my sentence and I am resolved your selfe shall be the other person of my Dialogue after the example of that Roman you love so well whose bookes of Philosophie are commonly his conferences with Brutus or other Sages the true and naturall judges of such matters yet Sir it is impossible for me to dissemble any longer a griefe I have at my heart and to end my Letter without letting you see a little cut you have given me there you made me a promise to come backe by Balzac and now you have taken another way Thus the wise men of the East dealt with Herod yet I am neither tyrant nor enemy to the Sonne of God This kind of proceeding is farre unlike the Belgicke sinceritie and it is not fit for Saints to mocke poore sinners But how unkindly soever you deale with me I can never turne Apostata and should you proove more cruell I should yet never be Sir But your c. From Balzac 15. Octob. 1633. To LETTER XXVIII SIR since you have taken pleasure in obliging me I will not have you have the greefe to loose your obligation nor that my incompetent acknowledgment should make you have the lesse stomacke for doing good I know your goodnesse is cleare and free from all forreigne respects and hath no motive but it selfe it is not at any mans prayers that the Sunne riseth neither doth he shine the more for any mans thankes your courtesies are of like condition Your favours have not beene procured by my making suite and as of my part nothing hath gone before the kindnesses I have received so on your part I assure my selfe you expect not that any thing should follow them yet something must bee done for examples sake and not to give this colour for shewing little courtesie to such as complaine that men are ungratefull The place where you are is full of such people all commerces are but Amusements and to make men beleeve the whole world is given to deceive and it is a great merit in you that you can follow so forlorne and solitary a thing as truth is in a Country where Divines maintaine her but weakely and where shee dares scarce bee seene in a Pulpit doth it not shew an extraordinary courage to take upon him to distribute her amongst the pretenders and that in open Theater It is no meane hardinesse to be good at the Court to condemne false Maximes where they have made a Sect and where they have gotten the force of Lawes I have beene assured you make profession of this difficult vertue and that in the greatest heate of calumnie and the coldest assistance that ever a poore innocent had you have beene passionately affected in my behalfe being altogether unknowne unto you but by the onely reputation of my ill fortune and even at this present you are taking care of some affaires of mine which I in a manner had abandoned and upon the report you heard of my negligence you make mee offer of your paines and industrie The onely using your name were enough for all this I might well spare my owne unprofitable indeavours where my negligence being favoured by you shall without all doubt be crowned You have heard speake of that Grecian whom the love of Philosoph●…e made to forget the tilling of his ground and of whom Aristotle said that hee was wise but not prudent Hee found a friend that supplied the defect of his owne ill husbandry and repaired the ruines of his house If my estate was like his I should expect from you the like favour but I aske not so much at this time All that I desire now hath promised me a dozen times over and I see no reason to distrust an Oracle Hee is neither inspired by any false Deitie nor hath made mee any doubtfull answer so that resting my selfe upon this foundation there seemes to have beene a kinde of Religion in my negligence and I am not altogether in so much blame as would make you thinke mee Hee is I deny not an Authour worthy to be credited and his testimony ought to be received but yet hee hath not the gift of not erring and never beleeve him more then when hee assures you that I am Sir Your c. From Balzac 9. of Feb. 1630. To Mounsieur du Pleix the Kings Historiographer LETTER XXIX SIR since the time that persecution hath broken out into flames against mee I never received more comfortable assistance then from your selfe and I account your strength so great that I cannot doubt of the goodnesse of a cause which you approve You were bound by no Obligation to declare your selfe in my behalfe and you might have continued Neutrall with decencie enough but the noblenesse of your minde hath passed over these petty rules of vulgar Prudence and you could not endure to see an honest man oppressed without taking him into your protection This is to shew mee too much favour in a Kingdome where Justice is no better than Mercenary and where paiment comes not but after long solliciting I know well that the soundest part is of my side and that my state is not ill amongst the wise but on the other side there are so many opposites on the By make warre upon mee that I am ready to leave my selfe to the mercy of the multitude and to be perswaded by the number of my enemies