Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	certain_a	company_n	good_a	35	3	2.1572	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30645	The Roman the conversation of the Romans and Mæcenas, in three excellent discourses / written in French by Monsieur de Balsac ; translated into English.	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1597-1654.	1652 (1652)	Wing B617; ESTC R33129	34,832	164

Victorious Peasants knowing nothing but husbandry and fighting were sensible onely of gross pleasures proportionable to the hardship of their births there is no great likelihood that they did possess a Vertue directly opposite to the rudeness they made profession of and which seldome accompanies poverty which is almost alwayes followed with an ill humour So long as their Eloquence to use the termes of Varro smelt of Garlick and Onions we could expect nothing very exquisite and it was hard for so sad an austerity as theirs to hearken to raillery and to be toucht with joy First then they were without weakning to soften themselves They must sweeten their courages and unrust their Manners That at last they might advise to cultivate themselves as they did their Gardens and their Lands They indeed did it with so much success and found so happy a foundation That presently the good Genius was amongst them a popular thing This politeness past from the Senate to inferiour degrees even to the lowest form of the meaner people And if in their cause their own witness is to be believ'd they have blotted out all the Graces and all the Vertues of Greece and have left the Atticism thereof far short of their Urbanity It s that Madam which they call'd that lovely Vertue of Society after having practised it many years without having given it a Name and should use have ripened amongst us a word of so ill a savour and have corrected the bitternesse which might have been found in it Wee might accustome our selves thereunto as to others which wee borrowed from the same language Now whether that word expresseth in Ours a certain Air of the great World and a colour and tincture of the Court which not only marks words and opinions but even the tone of the voice and the motion of the body Or whether it signifie a lesse perceptible motion which is known but by chance which hath nothing but is noble high and nothing which appears studied or learnt which is felt and is not seen and inspires a secret Genius which we lose in seeking it Or whether in a farther stretched signification it means the Science of Conversation and the gift to please in good company Or restraining of it it be taken for an addresse to touch the Spirit with I know not what kind of pricking yet whose pungency is pleasing to who receives it because it tickles and hurts not because it leaves a wound without grief and awakens only that part which malice offends To conclude Madam according to the judgment of a good Judge in such cases It was a knowledge abused by the Greeks which other people were ignorant of and from whom the Romans only learnt the true and lawful use Being so fit for them and so incommunicable to their nearest neighbours that those even of Italy could not acquire it without some failings nor so nicely counterfeit it that the resemblance should not mark the diversity It was then according to this accompt a domestick plant which could grow up but on the shore of the Tiber or on the Mount Palatin or at the foot of the Capitol or near the Camp of Mars and near some other quarter of that Capitall City of the world Is it possible that the Heaven and the Sun of Rome should have so much force and so much vertue Did they so sensibly agitate on the spirits of men Were they so absolutely necessary to make them good company I fear not of my self to say it not to wrong the rest of Italy and the rest of the civilized Provinces But to speak in general its certain Madam that the Citizens of Rome had great advantages in the world owed much to their Mothers and to their Breeding and knew many things which no body taught them there is no doubt but in their most familiar entertainment some graces were neglected some ornaments without art which the Doctors are ignorant of and which are above rules and precepts I doubted not but when I had seen it Thunder and Heaven and Earth mix in the O●ations of the Tribunals but it was a change most agreeably pleasing to consider them under more then an humane appearance disarmed of their Enthymemes and of their figures having left their feigned exclamations and artificial angers appearing in a condition wherein one might say They were truly themselves 'T was there Madam for example where Cicero was neither Sophist nor Rhetorician neither Idolater of this man nor furious against that neither of this nor of that party There hee was the true Cicero and after mocked himself privately of what he had adored publickly 'T was there he defin'd Men painted them not where he spoke of Cato as of a Pedant of the Portico or at most but as of a Citizen of Plato's Republick where he said That the purple of the Senate was finer but the steele of the Rebels was better where he confest Caesar was the Contriver of his own Fortune and that Pompey was but the work of his These sentiments which parted from the heart were hidden in great Assemblies and were discovered but between two or three friends and as many faithful domesticks and with whom hee communicated this secret felicity And if some of them have said that they reign'd all the time they Oration'd so soveraign was the power they exercised over mens mindes we may speak even of those which in their conversation restored the liberty which they had taken away in their Orations That they set at large and at ease the minds of those they opprest and tormented and that they drew them from that admiration which had agitated them with violence to make them sensible of a sweeter transport and ravish them with less force I have seen a great Prince in the low countries who in that envied the fortune of their free men and of those inferior friends and of the meaner sort which they had brought out of slavery to choose them their confidents and in effect it was a wonderful contentment to be a witness of their interiour lives and to be private to the more particular houres of their leisure And it were an incomparable satisfactiō to know those good things which have been said of Scipio and Laelius Atticus and Cicero and other honest people of every age To have the History of their conversation and Cabinets to adde to those of Affairs State Being born in the Empire and bred up in Triumphs all what proceeded from them bore the Character of Nobleness which distinguished thē from Subjects All of them were sensible of Command and Authority though government and conduct were not in question all was remarkable and exemplary even their Secrets and Solitude Having from their infancy seene Kings led Captives through the streets and other Kings Petitioners and Solicitors come in person to demand Justice and expect at the doore of the Senate their good or ill success They could retain nothing that was low in such rais'd