Microcosmography Part 5

[AT] _Gentile, or Gentle_, 8th edit. 1650.

[AU] Willingly, 8th edit. evidently a typographical error.

[AV] Edward Blount, who lived at the Black Bear, Saint Paul's Church-yard, appears to have been a bookseller of respectability, and in some respects a man of letters. Many dedications and prefaces, with as much merit as compositions of this nature generally possess, bear his name, and there is every reason to suppose that he translated a work from the Italian, which is int.i.tuled "_The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles_," &c. 4to. 1600. Mr.

Ames has discovered, from the Stationer's Register, that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant-taylor of London; that he was apprenticed to William Ponsonby, in 1578, and made free in 1588. It is no slight honour to his taste and judgment, that he was one of the partners in the first edition of Shakspeare.

MICROCOSMOGRAPHY;

_or_,

_A piece of the World characterized_.

I.

A CHILD

Is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his character. He is nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and much handling, dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper[1] unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by fore-seeing them. He kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. [[2]All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity.] His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish ports,

Shakspeare, of a child, says, "---- the hand of time Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume."

_K. John II._ i.

but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath out-lived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from G.o.d; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.[3] He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] So Washbourne, in his _Divine Poems_, 12mo. 1654:

"---- ere 'tis accustom'd unto sin, _The mind white paper_ is, and will admit Of any lesson you will write in it."--p. 26.

[2] This, and every other pa.s.sage throughout the volume, [included between brackets,] does not appear in the first edition of 1628.

[3] Adam did not, to use the words of the old Geneva Bible, "make himself breeches," till he knew sin: the meaning of the pa.s.sage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality.

II.

A YOUNG RAW PREACHER

Is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book, he is furnished for a preacher. His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at St. Mary's,[4] he utters in the country: and if he write brachigraphy,[5] his stock is so much the better. His writing is more than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book. Thus accomplished he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large.[6] The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made[7] _in_ it himself, is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for Bellarmine: yet he preaches heresy, if it comes in his way, though with a mind, I must needs say, very orthodox. His action is all pa.s.sion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits with a very good grace. [His stile is compounded of twenty several men's, only his body imitates some one extraordinary.] He will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion.

His commendation is, that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday; for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks with a sermon, than a taylor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he have waded farther in his profession, and would shew reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school-divinity a catechism. His fas.h.i.+on and demure habit gets him in with some town-precisian, and makes him a guest on Friday nights. You shall know him by his narrow velvet cape, and serge facing; and his ruff, next his hair, the shortest thing about him. The companion of his walk is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonishes with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends and much painfulness may prefer him to thirty pounds a year, and this means to a chambermaid; with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock:--next Sunday you shall have him again.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] St. Mary's church was originally built by king Alfred, and annexed to the University of Oxford, for the use of the scholars, when St. Giles's and St. Peter's (which were till then appropriated to them,) had been mined by the violence of the Danes. It was totally rebuilt during the reign of Henry VII., who gave forty oaks towards the materials; and is, to this day, the place of wors.h.i.+p in which the public sermons are preached before the members of the university.

[5] _Brachigraphy_, or short-hand-writing, appears to have been much studied in our author's time, and was probably esteemed a fas.h.i.+onable accomplishment. It was first introduced into this country by Peter Bales, who, in 1590, published _The Writing Schoolmaster_, a treatise consisting of three parts, the first "of Brachygraphie, that is, to write as fast as a man speaketh treatably, writing but one letter for a word;" the second, of Orthography; and the third, of Calligraphy. Imprinted at London, by T.

Orwin, &c. 1590. 4to. A second edition, "with sundry new additions,"

appeared in 1597. 12mo. Imprinted at London, by George Shawe, &c.

Holinshed gives the following description of one of Bale's performances:--"The tenth of August (1575,) a rare peece of worke, and almost incredible, was brought to pa.s.se by an Englishman borne in the citie of London, named Peter Bales, who by his industrie and practise of his pen, contriued and writ within the compa.s.se of a penie, in Latine, the Lord's praier, the creed, the ten commandements, a praier to G.o.d, a praier for the queene, his posie, his name, the daie of the moneth, the yeare of our Lord, and the reigne of the queene. And on the seuenteenthe of August next following, at Hampton court, he presented the same to the queene's maiestie, in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall; and presented therewith an excellent spectacle by him deuised, for the easier reading thereof: wherewith hir maiestie read all that was written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the lords of the councell, and the amba.s.sadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon hir finger." _Holinshed's Chronicle, page 1262, b. edit, folio, Lond. 1587._

[6] It is customary in all sermons delivered before the University, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and princ.i.p.al benefactors to, the preacher's individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. This, however, would appear very ridiculous when "_he comes down to his friends_" or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation.

[7] _of_, first edit. 1628.

III.

A GRAVE DIVINE

Is one that knows the burthen of his calling, and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient; for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the university, but expected the ballast of learning, and the wind of opportunity. Divinity is not the beginning but the end of his studies; to which he takes the ordinary stair, and makes the arts his way.

He counts it not prophaneness to be polished with human reading, or to smooth his way by Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anch.o.r.ed in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations at one but; and beats upon his text, not the cus.h.i.+on; making his hearers, not the pulpit groan.

In citing of popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. His sermon is limited by the method, not the hour-gla.s.s; and his devotion goes along with him out of the pulpit. He comes not up thrice a week, because he would not be idle; nor talks three hours together, because he would not talk nothing: but his tongue preaches at fit times, and his conversation is the every day's exercise. In matters of ceremony, he is not ceremonious, but thinks he owes that reverence to the church to bow his judgement to it, and make more conscience of schism, than a surplice. He esteems the church hierarchy as the church's glory, and however we jar with Rome, would not have our confusion distinguish us.

In simoniacal purchases he thinks his soul goes in the bargain, and is loath to come by promotion so dear; yet his worth at length advances him, and the price of his own merit buys him a living. He is no base grater of his tythes, and will not wrangle for the odd egg. The lawyer is the only man he hinders, by whom he is spited for taking up quarrels. He is a main pillar of our church, though not yet dean or canon, and his life our religion's best apology. His death is the last sermon, where, in the pulpit of his bed, he instructs men to die by his example.[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[8] I cannot forbear to close this admirable character with the beautiful description of a "_poure Persone_," _riche of holy thought and werk_, given by the father of English poetry:--

"Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, And in adversite ful patient: And swiche he was ypreved often sithes.

Ful loth were him to cursen for his tythes, But rather wolde he yeven out of doute, Unto his poure parishens aboute, Of his offring, and eke of his substance.

He coude in litel thing have suffisance.

Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder, In sikenesse and in mischief to visite The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite, Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf.

And though he holy were, and vertuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous, Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne, But in his teching discrete and benigne.

To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse, By good ensample, was his besinesse.

He waited after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him no spiced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

_Chaucer, Prol. to Cant. Tales, v._ 485.