Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	word_n	young_a	youth_n	93	3	7.8691	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A78017	Balzac's remaines, or, His last letters· Written to severall grand and eminent persons in France. Whereunto are annexed the familiar letters of Monsieur de Balzac to his friend Monsieur Chapelain. Never before in English.; Correspondence. English. Selections	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1597-1654.; Chapelain, Jean, 1595-1674.; Dring, Thomas.	1658 (1658)	Wing B616; Thomason E1779_1; ESTC R209057	331,826	458

comforted to behold this Ray of the Age of Eloquence at a time when one would think the Goths were newly risen again to sack Aquitaine and replant their gibberish but I concluded when I read your Latine that they were not yet Masters of the place where you were since you held out still for old Rome and their savage style had not gained you to be an abettor of it Continue I beseech you this la●dable designe oppose your self stoutly against the vicious imitation of some young Doctors who labour with might and maine for the re-establishment of Barbarism Their phrases are either forraigne or poetical and their Periods Rhimes and Antitheses If scurvy books afford any word either rotten with age or monstrous by the newness of it a bolder metaphor then usuall or an insolent and rash expression they rake up this dung with care and bedeck themselves with it with much curiosity They believe themselves much more handsome after taking in those ornaments then they were before This is a strange malady and a filthy love I cannot tell what their braines are made of to contemne the force the vigour and the lustre of Rome to become enamoured only on her diseases and her carkasse on her sepulcher and her ashes Or if there be any excesse in the last words what do they think they doe when they preferre before Senatours and Consulls of the Common-wealth all magnificent and glittering in their purple such poore tattered slaves the remainders of warre and persecution who after the ruine of the same Republique are come to beg and weare their ragges in the Provinces You easily discerne that in these two different Parties on our side we have our Livy our Salust our Cicero and on the other side they have their Cassiodore their Symmachus and their Apuleius coeteráque id genus ut meus ait Damon dehonestamenta Latinitatis I wish them better and sounder fancies and would very faine see an end of their rebellion against the true and lawfull Nephewes of Remus I beg of you reverend father the good examples you can bestow upon us but especially I entreat your good opinion and beseech you to believe me as truly I am Reverend father Your c. Ap. 3. 1643. LETTER V. To the reverend Father du Creux a Divine of the society of Jesus Rhetorick-Professour Reverend father I Had a sight of five or six leaves the other day which I admired and without question you saw them before me since they came from your father Sirmond he is an admirable father I have told you often but he is admirable in divers respects and is not to be lookt on only one way he is provided to instruct the learned and to delight meaner capacities he hath both the solid and the subtle part of learning and not to speak of the riches of a choise knowledge managed by a Magisteriall judgment the dispenser and regulatour of it I observe yet in his fourscore all the fire all the brave blood all the gallantry of Spirit that can be discovered in the very youth of the Demy-Gods If your Christian severity will not cannot digest that word let me say at least in the youth of such men as are more happily born then the rest I beseech you contrive it so that your young people set before them this man who is an honour both to his Age and Country as a copy how to write by and not some raw Latinists who would breed Schisms and Heresies in Eloquence who are crueller enemies of ancient Rome then ever Hannibal Iugurtha Mithridates c. They write iron and stones as they confesse themselves if not mudde and smoak as some upbraid them for Quis furor ille novus postponere casta profanis Impurasque sequi neglecto fonte lacunas Et tenebras sordesque tuo praeferre nitori Quis Romam violare luto quod Barbara vexit Tempestas olim in Latium nisi natus iniquo Sydere nunc velit Romani nominis hostis You see an enthusiasm ever possesses me when I discourse with you I sigh after next Thursday's conversation and rest Reverend father Your c. Aug. 30. 1640. LETTER VI. To the Reverend father Stephen of Bourges a Preaching Capuchin Reverend father I Send you back the Manifesto and expect the Exhortations you did me the favour to promise me It is not so much curiosity to look on them as fine things as an intention to be benefited by them as saving things that obliges me once more to desire them of you and you well remember the old Roman saying Medecines do no good unlesse they stay by it Which words cannot for they passe by without any stopping since your Latin-Country-friend will be our Nymph's Poet advise him to lay down the Character of Virgil in his Eclogues for his Idea I meet not with any Venice-glasse more polished or cleare then that Ovid's sweetnesse and facility likes me exceedingly under favour of the Critick Victorius and the Hypercritick As for Lucan Statius and Claudian they rant too high and make too loud a noise in a sick man's chamber They are Bells Drummes and Timbrels which we admit not into our Musick I write this to you in a huddle and have but this moment to tell you I am Reverend father Your c. Ap. 3. 1645. LETTER VII To Monsieur de Meré Knight SIR YOur judgment is true the productions of these fine wits are neither free nor naturall A straining and forcednesse is discernable every where and aiming to become admirable they happen to be prodigious They do not consider that Monsters are produced by excesse as well as deficiency and that Giants no more then dwarfs can be said to be of a handsome stature But shall we put those you speak of in the Catalogue who talked so highly to you of the Roman Majesty and the noblenesse of their style have a care Sir how you condemne them I beg their pardon of you for a more considerable interest then their own For in earnest if they are culpable Virgil cannot be innocent if in their Poems Caesar forgets his modesty what I beseech you doth the Head of Caesars race in the Aeneids do when being asked his name he answers Sum pius Aeneas famâ super aethera notus When he proposes himselfe as a pattern and Idea of true vertue Disce puer virtutem ex me c. When he styles himselfe the great Aeneas and believes a man doth not repine to dye because t' was he that killed him Hoc tamen infelix miseram solabere mortem Aeneae magni dextrâ cadis c We will examine these three passages at our first interview though you do not give me hopes of any such thing nor your Letter promise me your company I am with all my soul SIR Your c. Oct. 4. 1646. LETTER VIII To Monsieur Colardeau the Kings Attourney in Fontenay SIR I Applaud the designe you do me the favour to impart to me and it will be

hath been improved with excellent education he understands his own profession and that of other men too And although Politeness and Purity do seldome meet together yet he hath both the knowledge of the Court with the innocence of the Country I have heard him commended by the greatest persons of this Kingdome and I make no Question but you will be one of his illustrious approvers after you have had an hours entertainment of his discourse I most humbly beseech you Sir to do him this favour and dismiss him back to us as soon as you can with the satisfaction he promises himself from your justice He is one of those that civilize our Barbarisme and represent us your great world so that consequently conceiving my self interessed in my own particular in the supplication I have made to you I redouble it in this place with a little fervency and protest to you with much truth that no man can be more then I my self Sir Your c. May. 10. 1638. LETTER VII To the Same SIR VVHatever infirmity it is that confines me here it is only Madam Desloges power that withholds me from causing my self to be conveyed to Paris to be her solicitour there to you But she will not employ all the right she hath over me and whereas she may command me a journey she is contented to desire a Letter from me I have granted it to her as a favour which she does me or I rather which I do my self and I write it to you with as much concernment as if my own good fortune depended on the success she promises her self from your justice So the thing hath changed its nature it is not her business I recommend to you but my own interests which I put into your hands and prosecute in anothers name I account it superfluous Sir to tell you at this time of a vertue the most acknowledged and celebrated in the World It would not only be a st●fling of a great subject in too close a Room and bringing the Genus Demonstrativum to a strait but it would look as if had a designe to mixe some thing of ascititious in a cause which I esteem wholly my own and as it I had a mind to be little beholding to you when I make many importune instances and allegations I have not any such cunning design I should be very loath to diminish the worth of your benefit by the reflection on any other merit But on the contrary I declare to you that of the many obligations I have to you both of new and ancient date this will be the most considerable beyond compare Whereof I shall be more sensible and for which principally you shall be entitled My Benefactour as I all my life time will profess my selfe Sir my dear Cousen Your c. Aug. 15. 1639. LETTER VIII To the same Sir my deare Cousen YOu have obliged me with so much goodness in the affaires of others that I cannot doubt your assistance in my dearest and most sensible interests It is true I am ashamed that I never come before you but with the countenance of a suppliant and that I never write any thing but b●gging Letters I would at least once in my life offer you my devoirs more nobly and without blemish to the purity of my passion by this troublesome mixture of business that accompanies it But on the other side me thinks it would have something of Pride in it to be unwilling to owe you much your protection is so gentle that I am not troubled to be more yours every day by some new title which you acquire over me Whom should we invoke in our calamities but him that effectually hearkens to us and to whom shall we addresse our prayers but to a power that is beneficent to all but to the tutelar Saint of our Province and our peculiar Protectour Preserve us therefore Sir from the dreadfull harrasses of Barretry that menace us Which after it hath defrauded us of what our lawfull right was not strong enough to maintaine would now snatch that from us which the remorse of our judges hath left us I do not accuse their integrity though I cannot commend their judgment I only say to cleare them that oftentimes falshood has a better appearance then truth I see very evidently the fictions of Lawyers are more dangerous then those of Poets and the Sophisms of Normandy harder to resolve then those of the Latin Country If you pleas'd but to discourse upon this matter with any of our Commissioners I make no question but being inspired by your words he would receive a new spirit for the good of our business and the effect of his inspiration be immediately infused on all his Associates The reverence of your vertue would make them consider more exactly the goodness of our cause you and will be the chiefe Authour of the consolation we expect I conjure you to do us this favour and believe me alwayes Sir my deare Cousen Your c. Nov. 20. 1640. LETTER IX To Monsieur de la Nauve a member of Parliament in the Court of Enquiries SIR HItherto I have sollicited you in favour of my friends and never for my selfe At this time I must do it for one that is neerer to me then my self and I recommend something more then my own cause since it is that of Monsieur Chapelain I draw so much advantage from his friendship and so much profit from his example that if I have any comfort in solitude or any goodness in a wicked age I owe him both He made me a Philosopher and he detaines me from being a savage I cannot be indebted to him higher then that nor tell you more of him after I have said he alone is my Socrates Aristides and my Phocion I beg justice of you in the name of those three concentred together in this one In the name of vertue injured in his person in the name of all civill men interested in his cause for the sake of an honesty so pure and exact nay so rigid and scrupulous that we may with advantage parallel it with those of the first times These are high words I confesse yet they are not sufficient for my purpose and my thoughts outgoe them though my expression be forct to stoppe here That expression which did not dislike the King of Sweden and made the Duke of Weymar desire that I should speak of him doth afford me nothing that contents me when I should speak of my friend I find it weake in the testimony I now give of him and think I render him this office but imperfectly though it be with the utmost of my affection and with as much fervency and zeal as I am Sir my deare Cousen Your c. Sep. 10. 1640. Pardon my precipitation I had in my Letter forgot a fourth Grecian in whose favour I am bound to sollicite you with their permission I will adde Homer to Socrates Aristides and Phocion You will

praise Madamoiselle de Dampierre I am just but not liberall The Law of Nations would exact the like duty from me to the person of a Spanish Lady in the heat of a proclaimed War So that you must not take her upon my testimony that is too much beneath her merit But my suffrage must be added to the other commendations that are due to her and confess that she is indowed with modesty and all the other qualities that beget pride in her sexe She made you a strange request in desiring you to perswade me to forget that I had ever seen her Letters in the hands of a Lady that feasted me with them two hours together Your way Sir to effect this must be by the help of Sorcery you cannot make me forget two so happy hours and so dear to my remembrance with less then making me lose my memory Have you learned either Magick or Physick enough to reduce me to that condition Have you as much as will send me a disease like that of the ancient Oratour who having known all things forgot them all to his own name You see what is the demand of Madamoiselle de Dampierre I am confident neither you nor I are able to do any thing in it I shall ever be the same I was ever steadfast in my judgement and affections ever an admirer of Madamoiselle de Dampierre and the excellent things she writes and ever passionately SIR Your c. Apr. 25. 1640. LETTER XXI To Madam de Villesavin Madam VVHen I tender you my duty I have no other design then to tender it in intelligible language and not to pass for a man of the other World before a person of this Yet you are so good you would perswade me that I write you Letters and that I am eloquent without any intention of mine to be so You profess to admire Madam what I believe you could not endure but out of grace and indulgence If so favourable words were not accompanied with more obliging effects I should conceive some suspition they proceeded from the spirit of the Court and that in that part of the Kingdome it was their manner of mockerie But the craftiest way of derision not being the style of truth and consequently not yours I beseech yo● do not confound me any more by commendations that amaze me I might be vain enough not to reject them in things I did ever pretend to but what Colour can there be to admit them in this where they are no less beyond my ambition than out of their proper place No Madam my soul discovers her self to you in the simplicity of her first thoughts and you may easily perceive she is not naturally a Rhetorician They are my very thoughts that speak to you and the Art of fine Lang●age has nothing to doe with the passages of my heart We do not study our passions I have not learnt to love either by Greek or Latin from Aristotle or Cicero and though I could not write with any kind of Ornament yet I sho●ld not cease to protest with a great deale of truth that I am Madam Your c. Jan. 4. 1641. LETTER XXII To Madamoiselle de Scudery Madam COuld I have obtained one moment's dispensation from my indisposition I had told you long since that I have neither humility enough to reject the praises you bestow on me nor presumption to assent to them To believe them with an Historicall faith requires a very strong Imagination and yet to be offended at so obliging a Fable would speak an ill nature The mean herein which I intend to choose shall not be to your disadvantage I will consider your excellent language as purely yours and not with any reference to my self Thus they shall still have their true effect and I shall ever be convinced by them that is Madam of the beauties and perfections of your soul of the Eloquence that gives those praises not that to which they are directed Pardon my distrustfull humour I cannot believe you are of the same opinion with your Letter nor that my Relation to Menander is of that strength you speak of Possibly it may move you because you are compassionate of other mens misfortunes and your goodness interesses you in all the adventures of innocence In this respect indeed I may deserve your favour and your worthy brother too might justly take me for one of those objects that need his assistance He can defend with as much valour as assault and his bucklers are no lesse impenetrable then his other armes are piercing The piece of his which you sent me me thinks retaines that fatall solidity The greatest enemyes of shewes and Wit-feasts will not hereafter be able to violate them under such a protection Pleasure shall by his meanes acquire a good repute and by h●s favour we shall be merry without scruple in spight of the Sad and the Severe I could say more to you if you were desirous to examine me concerning your book or take an account of my studies But this is no place for Comment or Preamble and the noble assemblies which are not ungratefull will on all sides proclaime so loud the glory of their defender that it is probable a voice so weak and remote as mine would not be observed in the great shout of so many acclamations It shall suffice me therefore to tell you without any dresse of words that I am not voide of gratitude for so compleat an obligation and that it being impossible the present I received should be richer Monsieur de Scudery has found out an expedient to make it more acceptable by entrusting you to send it With his permission I thank you with all my heart and will ever be if you please to suffer me Madam Your c. Jul. 25. 1639. LETTER XXIII To Monsieur de Villesavin SIR AS I am not importunate so I will not be ungratefull The study of wisdome which teaches to beg nothing teaches how we ought to owe and though it ha's taken away my desire of getting it has not extinguish't my acknowledgment for benefits when I receive them You are one of those generous persons who take pleasure in obliging But how gratefull soever I am in my heart I might appeare somewhat too reserv'd did I any longer conceale how I am engaged to you I must at length Madam fall to an open publishing of your goodness and that of your memory The first expected not my entreaties to recommend my interests to Monsieur the Sur-intendant and the other minded you amongst the great crowd of the world that there was a certain Some-Body in the desart not unworthy your protection This I know not who hath yet some motions of a rationall life left enough to distinguish his repose from laziness He is by some chance or other illuminated still with a bright ray of light and his retirement is not altogether his buriall Vouchsafe me the honour to believe it and that I am ever passionately

my small family by the serenity of my countenance I am not cheerfull but when it pleases you nor have I any contentment but that which the Currier brings me with your Packet You evidence an excessive goodnesse and charity in satisfying my importunate curiosities so punctually and taking such particular care of a person altogether unprofitable unto you Yet you conceive what you doe short and deficient and complain of the tendernesse of my conscience that I forbear to dispatch you after your overthrow for to require of you the news of Rambouïllet Hostell as you apprehend I did were it not to oblige you to be the greatest Historian of this Age and to send me the relations of an infinite number of excellent things that are discours'd every day in that faire part of the World You know that Dies unus expraeceptis sapientiae traductus peccanti immortalitati anteponendus est That is in the vulgar Tongue that one day in the Hostell of Ramboüillet is more valuable then many Ages otherwhere and by consequence the Acts of one week in that Country considering the importance and worth of things would comprehend more matter than there is in severall decade of other Histories I understand such matter as deserves to be known and affords both instruction and divertisement In which respect I am not minded to charge you with the most precious but yet the most weighty burthen that I know in the world I desire but one sentence one half of a period or one small word of Madam the Marchionesse de Ramboüillet in repeating of which it would be very difficult to determine whether the Mother of the Gracchi were more absolutely Romane then she in regard of spirit and vertue The Eloquence of that ancient Cornelia was sutably extoll'd by them of her times And we must also confesse to the glory of ours that her words are fram'd with no greater proportion of solid reason and judgement than they are of modesty and honour I am SIR Your c. Balzac 18 Feb. 1638. LET. XXV SIR THe feminine Senate that assembles every Wednesday at the house of Madam is in my opinion an odde conceit But Cato would have termed it a disease of the Commonwealth which ought necessarily to be redress'd and on such an occasion the old Romanes would have sent to consult the Oracle of Delphos what so great a Prodigie might portend If the Lady that is President of the Assembly has as I am told made a certain person called a Denizen of Rome there remains nothing for her to do in my opinion then to espouse the Emperour of the little Houses I have long since declar'd my selfe against the Pedantry of the other Sex and profess'd that I could more willingly tolerate a woman with a beard then one that pretends to learning It is fit the eloquent Laday de be at least Atturney-Generall of this Soveraign Court and next her Madam In earnest had I authority in the Civill Government I would condemn all those women perpetually to the distaffe that undertake to write books that transform their souls by a masculine disguise and break the rank they hold in the world There are some that passe their censure as confidently on our Verse and Prose as on their Italian Dresses and Needle-works They scruple to say an Heroick Poem but alwaies call it Epick and there is never any mention of the Kid but they presently fall to discourse of the singlenesse of the subject and the rule of twenty four hours No more at present but that I am SIR Your c. Balzac 21 Sep. 1638. LETTER XXVI SIR IN requitall of the newes of the great World you sent me I impart to you those of our Village Never did Nature cloath our fields with more beauty and delightfull verdure nor were the trees and corn more florid and promising The Sun does not employ all those beams he did in April the year past when he burnt up the herbs in the tendernesse of their birth his hear is mild innocent and supportable to the weakest heads The coolnesse and dewes of the nights succeed in their course and yield refreshment to what would languish upon the earth without their succour But having rather laid the dust then made it dirty it must be granted they contribute no small share to the pleasure of those rare mornings we enjoy I am very solicitous of losing the least moment of them and precisely begin them at half an houre after four and so continue them without intermission till noon during that space I walk abroad without wearinesse and in such places where I may conveniently sit at my pleasure I read Books that do not oblige me to meditate and my study is with indifferent attention for at the same time I do not cease to listen to an infinite number of Nightingales wherewith our thickets are inspired I passe my judgment of their merit as you do of that of Poets in the place where you are and indeed if you are ignorant of it I assure you there is as much difference between Nightingale and Nightingale as between Poet and Poet. There are some of the first and some of the inferiour Classis We have enough of Maillets and and also some Chapelains and Malherbes The rest another time I am SIR Your c. Balzac 12 May 1638. LETTER XXVII SIR THe father Narni is an Orator whom I admired in the Chair but do not so upon the Paper in the little that I have read of his book I have observed very many poeticall expressions and cold allusions together with certain fables intermixed which as they do not please me in any place so I absolutely condemn them in Christian eloquence Besides all which I know not who can allow him to alledge before the Pope and the sacred Colledge of Cardinalls Alexander ab Alexandro Caelius Rhodiginus Pierius Valerianus and other like Authors so little deserving of the honour he doth them and so remote from his argument in a word who have nothing to do with the grandeur of Jesus Christ and the Majesty of the holy Gospel I perceive hence that the father Narni was well born but badly enough instructed and that his defects proceeded from his Masters and his Books but that he owes his eloquence almost wholly to himself he speaks sometimes in a high and noble strain and even in the Book in which there are so many cold allusions and poeticall expressions and where Pierius Valerianus is quoted there are some incomparable passages I must have a copy of it at what rate soever and I will not want one tho●gh I be enforced to request it of Pope Vrban who heretofore did me the honour to caresse me It ought not to seem strange that I have such inclination for an Oratour of my acquaintance But there is yet something more particular that justifies my passion and who would now conclude but there were some domesticall interests between us Neverthelesse it is a reall truth