Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise (Volume 2 de 5)

249:

250:

«O sweetest, fairest lily!»

251:

O you, kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
The untun'd and jarring senses, O, wind up,
Of this child-changed father!
O my dear father! Restauration hang
Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!
Was this a face
To be exposed against the warring winds?
Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire....
How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

252:

O, you're well met. The hoarded plague o' the gods
Requite your love!
If that I could for weeping, you should hear,
Nay, and you shall hear some.
I'll tell thee what.—Yet go.
Nay, but thou shall stay too.—I would my son
Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,
His good sword in his hand.

Voyez aussi la scène III, acte I. C'est le triomphe naïf et abandonné d'une femme du peuple.

I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he has proved himself a man.

253:

As I am an honest man, I had thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more offence in that than in reputation.

254:

It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor, nor he his to her.... These Moors are changeable in their wills. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth. When she is sated with his body, she will find the errors of her choice.

255:

Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

256:

To suckle fools and chronicle small beer....
O gentle lady, do not put me to 't;
For I am nothing, if not critical.

257:

Work on,
My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught.

258:

259: Voyez le même cynisme et le même scepticisme dans Richard III. Tous les deux commencent par diffamer la nature humaine, et sont misanthropes de parti pris.

260:

And what's he, then, that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free, I give, and honest,
Probal to thinking, and indeed the course
To win the Moor again.

261: Voyez sa conversation avec Brabantio, puis avec Roderigo, acte I.

262: Voyez encore dans Timon, et surtout dans Hotspur, l'exemple parfait de l'imagination véhémente et déraisonnable.

263:

264:

265:

266:

No more, I say;
For that I have not wash'd my nose that bled,
Or foil'd some debile wretch,—you shout me forth
In acclamations hyperbolical;
As if I loved my little should be dieted
In praises sauc'd with lies.

267:

I will go wash;
And when my face is fair, you shall perceive,
Whether I blush, or no. Howbeit, I thank you,
I mean to stride your steed....

268:

Bid them wash their faces,
And keep their teeth clean....
To beg of Hob and Dick....

269:

What must I say?
I pray, sir.... Plague upon 't! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace:—look, sir; my wounds;
I got them in my country's service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran
From the noise of our own drums.

270:

271:

Hence, old goat! Hence, rotten thing, or I shall
Shake thy bones out of thy garments.
.... You speak o' the people,
As if you were a god to punish, not a man
Of their infirmity.

272:

273:

.... The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up
The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees,
Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That has receiv'd an alms.
.... Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it.
And throw it against the wind....

274:

Pray, be content;
Mother, I am going to the market-place;
Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov'd
Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.

275:

276:

Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, flaying; pent to linger
But with a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word;
Nor check my courage for what they can give,
To hav't with saying, Good morrow.

277:

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcases of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you.
.... Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.

278:

279:

.... Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd Murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus, with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design,
Moves like a ghost. (A bell rings.)
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

280:

What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!

281:

282:

Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder Sleep, the innocent Sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath!
Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life's feast.
.... Glamis hath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more!

283:

To know my deed,—'twere best not know myself. (Knock.)
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, would thou couldst.

284:

Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

285:

I am in blood,
Steep'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
.... But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fretful fever he sleeps well,
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him farther!

286:

287:

Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing
But he who knows nothing, is once seen to smile,
Where ... the dead man's knell
Is scarce ask'd, for whom and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

288:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.—
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing....
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
.... They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.
.... I have supp'd full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.

289: Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.

290:

O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on 't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king....
So loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
.... And yet, within a month,
Let me not think on 't;—Frailty, thy name is woman!...
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body....
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:—O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot, come to good;
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

291:

Hold, hold, my heart;
And you my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up!—Remember thee?
Ay, poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past.
And thy commandment all alone shall live.
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tablet;—meet it is, I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark:
So, uncle, there you are.

292:

293:

294:

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the sky, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither.

295:

Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.

296:

297:

298: Twelfth Night, As you like it, Tempest, Winter's Tale, etc., Cymbeline, Merchant of Venise, etc.

299:

300:

301:

302:

O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love....

303:

304:

305:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh, ho! sing heigh, ho! unto the green holly:—
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly!
Then, heigh, ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

306: Comparez Jacques à Alceste. C'est le contraste d'un misanthrope par raisonnement et d'un misanthrope par imagination.

307:

308:

A fool, a fool!—I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool!—a miserable world!—
As I do live by food, I met a fool,
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool.
.... O noble fool! worthy fool! Motley's the only wear.
.... O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.

309:

310:

311:

312:

313:

Come, sit down on this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
So doth the wood-bine, the sweet honey-suckle,
Gently intwist,—the femal ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O how I love thee! how I dote on thee!

314:

315:

These things seem small and extinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
.... I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

316:

My dainty Ariel....
... When the bee sucks, there suck I
In a cowslip's bell I lie....
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
.... I drink the air before me, and return
Or e'er your pulse twice beat.
.... We the globe may compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon.

317: Même loi dans le monde organique et dans le monde moral. C'est ce que Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire appelle unité de composition.

318: Édition des œuvres complètes, t. I.

319: Voyez dans Corinne le jugement de lord Nevil sur les Italiens.

320: Tischreden, passim.

321: Voyez dans le Corpus historicorum medii ævi, par G. Eccard, t. II: Stephanus Infessuræ, p. 1995; Burchard, grand camérier d'Alexandre VI, p. 2134.—Guichardin, p. 211, édit. Panthéon littéraire.

322: Voyez, dans les Mémoires de Casanova, le tableau de cette pourriture.—Voyez les Mémoires de Scipion Rossi, sur les couvents de Toscane, à la fin du dix-huitième siècle.

323: D'Homère à Constantin, la cité antique est une association d'hommes libres qui a pour but la conquête et l'exploitation d'autres hommes libres.

324: Voyage de Misson, 1700. Mémoires de la margrave de Baireuth. Voyez encore aujourd'hui les mœurs des étudiants.

«Les Allemands sont, comme vous savez, d'étranges buveurs; il n'y a point de gens au monde plus caressants, plus civils, plus officieux; mais encore un coup ils ont de terribles coutumes sur l'article de boire. Tout s'y fait en buvant; on y boit en faisant tout. On n'a pas eu le temps de se dire trois paroles dans les visites, qu'on est tout étonné de voir venir la collation, ou tout au moins quelques brocs de vin accompagnés d'une assiette de croûtes de pain hachées avec du poivre et du sel: fatal préparatif pour de mauvais buveurs. Il faut vous instruire des lois qui s'observent ensuite, lois sacrées et inviolables. On ne doit jamais boire, sans boire à la santé de quelqu'un; aussitôt après avoir bu, on doit présenter du vin à celui à la santé de qui on a bu. Jamais il ne faut refuser le verre qui est présenté, et il faut naturellement vider jusqu'à la dernière goutte. Faites, je vous prie, quelques réflexions sur ces coutumes, et voyez par quel moyen il est possible de cesser de boire; aussi ne finit-on jamais. C'est un cercle perpétuel en Allemagne; boire en Allemagne, c'est boire toujours.» (Misson, Voyage en Italie.)

325: Voyez ses lettres et la sympathie qu'il y témoigne pour Luther.

326: Collection des gravures sur bois d'Albert Dürer. Remarquez la concordance de son Apocalypse et des conversations familières de Luther.

327: Calvin, le logicien de la Réforme, explique très-bien la filiation de toutes les idées protestantes (Institution chrétienne, liv. I). 1. L'idée du Dieu parfait, juge rigide. 2. L'alarme de la conscience. 3. L'impuissance et la corruption de la nature. 4. L'arrivée de la grâce gratuite. 5. Le rejet des pratiques et cérémonies.

328: «Selon que l'orgueil est enraciné en nous, il nous semble toujours que nous sommes justes et entiers, sages et saints; sinon que nous soyons convaincus par arguments manifestes de notre injustice, souillure, folie et immondicité. Car nous n'en sommes pas convaincus si nous jetons l'œil sur nos personnes seulement, et que nous ne pensions pas aussi bien à Dieu, lequel est la seule règle à laquelle il nous faut ordonner et compasser ce jugement.... (Et alors) ce qui avait belle montre de vertu se découvrira n'être que fragilité.

«Voilà d'où est procédé l'horreur et étonnement duquel l'Écriture récite que les saints ont été affligés et abattus toutes et quantes fois qu'ils ont senti la présence de Dieu. Car nous voyons ceux qui étaient comme eslongnés de Dieu et se trouvaient assurés et allaient la tête levée, sitôt qu'il leur manifeste sa gloire, être ébranlés et effarouchés, en sorte qu'ils sont opprimés, voire engloutis en l'horreur de mort et qu'ils s'évanouissent.» (Calvin, Institution chrétienne, liv. I, p. 2.)

329: Mot de saint Augustin.

330: Mélanchthon, préface des Œuvres de Luther. «Manifestum est libros Thomæ, Scoti et similium prorsus mutos esse de justitia fidei, et multos errores continere de rebus maximis in Ecclesia. Manifestum conciones monachorum in templis fere ubique terrarum aut fabulas fuisse de Purgatorio et de Sanctis, aut fuisse qualemcumque legis doctrinam seu disciplinæ, sine voce Evangelii de Christo, aut fuisse nenias de discrimine ciborum, de feriis et aliis traditionibus humanis.... Evangelium purum, incorruptum, et non dilutum ethnicis opinionibus.» Voyez aussi Fox, Acts and monuments, t. II, p. 42.

331: Voyez Froude, History of England. La conduite de Henri VIII est présentée là sous un nouveau jour.

332: Froude, I, 175, 191. Petition of Commons. Cette récrimination publique et authentique montre tout le détail de l'organisation et de l'oppression cléricales.

333: Froude, I, 26, 193. Great and excessive fees. Voyez le détail, ib.

334: En mai 1528. Froude, I, 179, 85, 201; II, 435.

335: Hale's Criminal causes; Suppression of the monasteries, Camden Society's publications.

336: «Down with them.» (Latimer's Sermons.)

337: Horsyn Preste. Hale, 99.

338: Froude, I, 90. En 1514. Improbus animus.

339: Fox, Acts and Monuments. In-folio, t. II, 23. En 1521.

340: Voyez, passim, les estampes dans Fox.—Tous les détails qu'on va lire sont tirés des biographies. Voyez celles de Cromwell par Carlyle, de Fox le quaker, de Bunyan, et les procès rapportés tout au long par Fox.

341: Froude, II, 33, 1529. «Grâce à Dieu, disent les évêques, aucune personne notable de notre temps n'est tombée dans le crime d'hérésie.»

342: En 1536. Strype's memorials, appendix, 42. Froude, III, chap. xii.

343: Covenants.

344: 1549. Traduction de Tyndal (Bibliothèque impériale).

345: Le mot est de Stendhal; c'est son impression d'ensemble.

346: Voyez la traduction de Lemaistre de Sacy, si peu biblique.

347: Voy. Ewald, Geschichte des Volks Israel. Apostrophe d'Ewald au troisième rédacteur du Pentateuque: Erhabener Geist..., etc.

348: Comparez le psaume 104, dans l'admirable traduction de Luther et dans la traduction anglaise.

349: Le premier rudiment considérable est de 1545. Froude, V, 145 et 146. Le Prayer-Book subit plusieurs changements en 1552, d'autres sous Élisabeth, et quelques-uns enfin à la Restauration.

350: Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy on us, miserable offenders; spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore Thou them that are penitent, according to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu, our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for His sake, that we may hereafter live a godly righteous and sober life.

351: Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and doth forgive the sins of all them who are penitent; create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.

352: Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?

I take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

353: Dearly beloved, know this that Almighty God is the Lord of life and death, and of all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health, age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God's visitation. And for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you, whether it be to try your patience, for the example of others..., or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father, know you certainly that, if you truly repent you of your sins and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God's mercy.... submitting yourself wholly unto His will, it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life.

354: Lettre de Henri VIII à Cranmer. Froude, IV, 484. «Faire usage des paroles d'une langue étrangère, avec un simple sentiment de dévotion, quand l'esprit n'en retire aucun fruit, ne peut être ni agréable à Dieu, ni salutaire à l'homme. Celui qui ne comprend pas la force et l'efficacité de l'entretien qu'il a avec Dieu ressemble à une harpe ou à une flûte, qui a un son, mais ne comprend pas le bruit qu'elle fait. Un chrétien est plus qu'un instrument, et les sujets du roi doivent être capables de prier comme des hommes raisonnables dans leur propre langue.»

355: Sternhold, 1549.

356: On peut voir dans l'Oraison funèbre de la comtesse de Richmond, par John Fisher, les pratiques auxquelles cette religion succédait.

As for fasting, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not bound, yet those days that by the church were appointed, she kept them diligently and seriously, and in especial the holy Lent throughout, that she restrained her appetite, till one meal of fish on the day; besides her other peculiar fasts of devotion, as St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Catharine, with other; and throughout all the year, the Friday and Saturday she full truly observed. As to hard clothes wearing, she had her shirts and girdles of hair, which, when she was in health, every week she failed not certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the other, that full often her skin, as I heard say, was pierced therewith.

In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so after them, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our Lady; then she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain she said also matins of the day; and after that, daily heard four or five masses upon her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day, was ten of the clocks, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her stations to three altars daily; daily her dirges and commendations she would say, and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our Lady, beside many other prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily when she was in health, she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which after the manner of Rome, containeth sixty and three aves, and at every ave, to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here before have heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same those that were present at any time when she was houshilde, which was full nigh a dozen times every year, what floods of tears there issued forth of her eyes!

357: A plowland must have sheepe, yea they must have sheepe, to dung their ground for bearing of corn; for if they have no sheepe to helpe to fat the ground, they shall have but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make them veneries or bacon of. Their bacon is their venison. (For they shall now have hangum tuum if they get any other venison.) So that bacon is their necessary meate to feed on, which they may not lack. They must have other cattels, as horses to draw their plows, and for carriage of things to the markets, and kine for their milke and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their rents. These cattell must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest must needs fail them. And pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in, and inclosed from them. (Latimer's Sermons, édition 1635, p. 105.)

358: Now after I had been acquainted with him, I went with him to visit the prisoners in the tower at Cambridge, for he was ever visiting prisoners and sick folk. So we went together, and exhorted them as well as we were able to do; minding them to patience, and to acknowledge their faults. Among other prisoners, there was a woman which was accused that she had killed her child, which act she plainly and steadfastly denied, and could not be brought to confess the act; which denying gave us occasion to search for the matter, and so we did; and at length we found that her husband loved her not, and therefore he sought means to make her out of the way. The matter was thus:—

A child of hers had been sick by the space of a year, and so decayed, as it were, in a consumption. At length it died in harvest time; she went to her neighbours and other friends to desire their help to prepare the child for burial; but there was nobody at home, every man was in the field. The woman, in a heaviness and trouble of spirit, went, and being herself alone, prepared the child for burial. Her husband coming home, not having great love towards her, accused her of the murder, and so she was taken and brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I could learn, through earnest inquisition, I thought in my conscience the woman was not guilty, all the circumstances well considered.

Immediately after this, I was called to preach before the king, which was my first sermon that I made before His Majesty, and it was done at Windsor; where His Majesty, after the sermon was done, did most familiarly talk with me in a gallery. Now, when I saw my time, I kneeled down before His Majesty, opening the whole matter, and afterwards most humbly desired His Majesty to pardon that woman. For I thought in my conscience she was not guilty, or else I would not for all the world sue for a murderer. The king most graciously heard my humble request, insomuch that I had a pardon ready for her at my returning homeward. In the mean season, that woman was delivered of a child in the tower of Cambridge, whose godfather I was, and Mistress Cheak was godmother. But all that time I hid my pardon, and told her nothing of it, only exhorting her to confess the truth. At length the time came when she looked to suffer; I came as I was wont to do, to instruct her; she made great moan to me, and most earnestly required me that I would find the means that she might be purified before her suffering. For she thought she would have been damned if she should suffer without purification. So we travailed with this woman till we brought her to a good opinion; and at length showed her the king's pardon, and let her go.

This tale I told you by this occasion, that though some women be very unnatural, and forget their children, yet when we hear any body so report, we should not be too hasty in believing the tale, but rather suspend our judgments till we know the truth.

359: Dépêche de Noailles, ambassadeur français et catholique. Pictorial history, II, 524.

360: John Fox, History of the acts and monuments of the Church.

In the mean time William's father and mother came to him, and desired heartily of God that he might continue to the end in that good way which he had begun, and his mother said to him, that she was glad that ever she was so happy to bear such a child, which could find in his heart to lose his life for Christ's name's sake.

Then William said to his mother, 'For my little pain which I shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown of joy: may you not be glad of that, mother?' With that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying, 'I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end: yea, I think thee as well-bestowed as any child that ever I bare....'

Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped over the parlour grounsel, and went forward cheerfully, the sheriff's servant taking him by one arm, and his brother by another; and thus going in the way, he met with his father according to his dream, and he spake to his son, weeping, and saying, 'God be with thee, son William;' and William said, 'God be with you, good father, and be of good comfort, for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry.' His father said, 'I hope so, William,' and so departed. So William went to the place where the stake stood, even according to his dream, whereas all things were very unready. Then William took a wet broom faggot, and kneeled down thereon, and read the 51st psalm, till he came to these words, 'The sacrifice of God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and a broken heart, O God, thou wilt not despise....'

Then said the sheriff, 'Here is a letter from the queen: if thou wilt recant, thou shalt live; if not, thou shalt be burned.' 'No,' quoth William, 'I will not recant, God willing.' Then William rose, and went to the stake, and stood upright to it. Then came one Richard Pond, a bailiff, and made fast the chain about William.

Then said Master Brown, 'Here is not wood enough to burn a leg of him.' Then said William, 'Good people, pray for me; and make speed, and dispatch quickly; and pray for me while ye see me alive, good people, and I will pray for you likewise.' 'How?' quoth Master Brown, 'pray for thee? I will pray no more for thee than I will pray for a dog....'

Then there was a gentleman which said, 'I pray God have mercy upon his soul.' The people said, 'Amen, Amen.'

Immediately fire was made. Then William cast his psalter right into his brother's hand, who said, 'William, think on the holy Passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death.' And William answered, 'I am not afraid.' Then lift he up his hands to heaven, and said, 'Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit!' And casting down his head again into the smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of God.

361: Neal, History of the puritans, I, 69, 72.

362: Dépêche de Renard à Charles-Quint.

363: «Ô éloquente, juste et puissante mort! Celui que personne n'osait avertir, tu l'as persuadé. Ce que personne n'osait faire, tu l'as fait. Celui que tout le monde a flatté, toi seule tu l'as jeté hors du monde et méprisé. Ta as ramassé ensemble toute la grandeur si fort tendue, tout l'orgueil, la cruauté, l'ambition de l'homme, et couvert tout ensemble de ces deux mots étroits: Hic jacet.»

364: The Ecclesiastical policy, 1594. In-folio.

365: That which doth assign unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term Law....

Now, if Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the forme of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should losen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions; if the prince of the Light of Heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing sickness, begin to stand and to rest himself.... what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly, that obedience of Creature unto the law of Nature is the stay of the whole world?...

Between men and beasts there is no possibility of sociable communion, because the well-spring of that communion is a natural delight which man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, specially those things wherein the excellency of this kinde doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of humane communion therefore is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause, seeing beasts are not hereof capable, for so much as with them we can use no such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on earth to whom Nature has denied sense, yet lower than to be sociable companions of man to whom Nature has given reason: it is of Adam said, that among the beasts he found not for himself any meet companion. Civil society doth more content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living, because in society this good of mutual participation is so much larger than otherwise. Herewith notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we covet (if it might be) to have a kind of society and fellowship, even with all mankind.

366: For if the natural thought of man's wit may by experience and studie attain into such ripeness in the knowledge of things humane, that men in this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment, what reason have we to think but that, even in matters Divine, the like wits furnished with necessary helps, exercised in Scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow into a such perfection of knowledge that men shall have just cause, when any thing pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more willingly to incline their minds toward that which the sentence of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound? (Liv. II, p. 54.)

367: Voyez les Dialogues de Galilée; c'est la même idée qui, en même temps, est poursuivie à Rome par l'Église et défendue en Angleterre par l'Église.

368: For more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these strifes) to labor under the same yoke, as men that look for the same eternal reward of their labours, to be conjoined with you in bands of indissoluble love and amity, to live as if our persons being many, our souls were but one, rather than in such dismembered sort, to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions.

369: Témoignage de Clarendon.

370: Voyez dans J. Taylor (Liberty of prophesying) les mêmes doctrines, 1647.

371: «I have learned from the ancient fathers of the Church that nothing is more against religion than to force religion.... If protestants did offer violence to other men's conscience and compell them to embrace their Reformation, I excuse them not.»

372: And what can we complain of the weakness of our strength or the pressure of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach, almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slacked by a greater pain and a huge fear? This man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchfull; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimensions; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him, but one that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he runs from all this misery. (Holy dying, sect. IV, chap. 3.)

373: I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

374: Apples of Sodom. We have already opened this dung-hill covered with snow, which was indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosy, but it was not better, etc.

375: For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man.

376: «Lorsque Jésus-Christ est né, il a pleuré et crié comme un autre enfant. Marie a dû le soigner et veiller sur lui, l'allaiter, lui donner à manger, l'essuyer, le tenir, le porter, le coucher, etc., tout comme une mère fait pour son enfant. Ensuite il a été soumis à ses parents; il leur a souvent porté du pain, de la boisson et autres objets. Marie lui aura dit: «Mon petit Jésus, où as-tu été? Ne peux-tu donc pas rester tranquille?» Et lorsqu'il aura grandi, il aura aidé Joseph dans son état de charpentier.» (Tischreden.)

Paroles à Carlostad: «Tu crois apparemment que l'ivrogne Christ, ayant trop bu à souper, a étourdi ses disciples de paroles superflues.»

377: «The unknown country.»

378: Holy dying, chap. I, sect. i.

379: All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton, Time, throws up the earth, and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity. Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death; and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to all those months which we have already lived, and we shall never live them over again: and still God makes little periods of our age. First we change our world, when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world: and if our mothers, or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroys your vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but, during that state, are as disinterested as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us, representing a formal prologue to the tragedy; and still, every seven years it is odds but we shall finish the last scene: and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening some parts and loosening others, we taste the grave and the solemnities of our own funerals, first, in those parts that ministered to vice, and, next, in them that served for ornament; and, in a short time, even they that served for necessity become useless and entangled like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of death: and we have many more of the same signification—gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits of a man pray upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue for one death, and lays up for another, and while we think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of our nostrils—we have the less to live upon for every word we speak.

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it; and God, by all the variety of his providence, makes us see death every where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies, and the expectation of every single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two: and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and, all the summer long, men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till winter only, stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus, death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a dead man's bones.

380: Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced upon its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age: it bowed the head, and broke its stalk; and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and that change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings, that they who, six hours ago, tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious services, cannot, without some regret, stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving way, that, after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you as me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral?

381: Golden grove.

382: Eternal God, Almighty Father of thousand angels, by whose care and providence I am preserved and blessed, comforted and assisted, I humbly beg of thee to pardon the sins and follies of this day, the weakness of my services, and the strength of my passions, the rashness of my words, and the vanity and evil of my actions. O just and dear God, how long shall I confess my sins, and pray against them, and yet fall under them? O let it be so no more; let me never return to the follies of which I am ashamed, which bring sorrow and death, and thy displeasure, worse than death. Give me a command over my evil inclinations and a perfect hatred of sin, and a love to thee above all the desires of this world. Be pleased to bless and preserve me this night from all sin and violence of chance, and the malice of the spirits of darkness: watch over me in my sleep, and, whether I sleep or wake, let me be thy servant. Be thou first and last in all my thoughts and the guide and continual assistance of all my actions. Preserve my body, pardon the sin of my soul, and sanctify my spirit. Let me always live holily and justly and soberly; and, when I die, receive my soul into thy hands.

383: Voir le théâtre de Beaumont et Fletcher, les personnages de Bawder, Protalyce et Brunehaut dans Thierry et Théodoret.—Dans The custom of the country, plusieurs scènes représentent l'intérieur d'une maison de prostitution, chose fréquente du reste dans ce théâtre (Massinger, Shakspeare). Mais ici les pensionnaires de la maison sont des hommes.—Voyez aussi Rule a wife and have a wife.

384: Calvin, cité par Haag, II, 216, Histoire des dogmes chrétiens.

385: Ce sont les supralapsaires.

386: Traduction de Tyndal, 1549.

387: Interrogatoire de M. Axton, 1570. «Je ne puis consentir à porter ce surplis; c'est contre ma conscience. J'espère qu'avec l'aide de Dieu je ne mettrai jamais cette manche, qui est une marque de la bête.»—Interrogatoire de White, gros bourgeois de Londres, accusé de ne pas aller à son église paroissiale (1572): «Toutes les Écritures sont pour détruire l'idolâtrie et chaque chose qui s'y rapporte.—Quel est l'endroit où est cette défense?—Le Deutéronome et d'autres endroits; et Dieu par Isaïe nous commande de ne point nous souiller avec les vêtements de l'image, mais de les rejeter comme une impureté de femme.»

388: Préface de Tyndal.

389: Un mot revient sans cesse: Tenderness of conscience. A squeamish stomach.... Our weaker brethern, etc.

390: La séparation des anglicans et des dissidents peut être datée de 1564.

391: 1592.

392: Burton's Diary, I, 54, etc.

393: Guizot, Portraits politiques, 63. Voyez Carlyle, Cromwell's speeches and letters.

394: Cromwell's speeches and letters, by Carlyle.

395: Voyez ses discours. Le style est décousu, obscur, passionné, extraordinaire, comme d'un homme qui n'est pas maître de son cerveau, et qui, malgré cela, voit juste par une sorte d'intuition.

396: Carlyle, ib., I, 254.

397: Fox's Journal, 511, 543.

398: Burton's Diary, I, 54.—Neal, History of the Puritans (supplément, t. III).—Pictorial History, III, 813.

399: En anglais, classical.

400: Neal, II, 359.

401: Whitelocke's memorials, I, 68.

402: Neal, II, 155.

403: Comparer à notre Révolution: la Bastille démolie, on y mit l'écriteau suivant: «Ici l'on danse.» Dans ce contraste on voit en abrégé l'opposition des deux doctrines et des deux nations.

404: Neal, II, 552, 562, 571.

405: Baxter, 101.

406: Macaulay, History of England, I, 152.

407: «Le nommé John Denis est fouetté en public pour avoir chanté une chanson profane. La petite Mathias ayant donné des marrons rôtis à Jérémie Boosy, et lui ayant dit avec ironie qu'il les lui rendra en Paradis, criera trois fois grâce à l'église, et sera trois jours au pain et à l'eau en prison.» Massachussets, 1660-1670.

408: Neal, II, 384.

409: «Selon le sens ordinaire de l'Écriture, dit le major Disbrowne, presque tous commettent des blasphèmes, selon ce mot de notre Sauveur dans saint Marc: «Péché, blasphème;—si cela est, il n'y a personne sans blasphème. Ainsi furent accusés David et le fils d'Éli, selon le texte: «Tu as blasphémé et fait blasphémer les autres.»

410: Guizot, Portraits politiques.

411: Also I should, at these years, be greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-fire, still fearing that it would be my lot to be found at last among those devils and hellish fiends, who are there bound down with the chains and bonds of darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

These things, I say, when I was but a child but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that then, in the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith, yet could I not let go my sins. Yea, I was also then so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil, supposing they were only tormentors, that if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor than be tormented myself.

412: Another time, being in the field with my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I, having a stick, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers, by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end.

413: But withal I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all things (both the high-place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else) belonging to the church; counting all things holy that were therein contained, and especially the priest and clerk most happy, and, without doubt, greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought, of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his work therein. This conceit grew so strong upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought for the love I did bear unto them (supposing they were the ministers of God), I could have laid down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them—their name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.

414: Now you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered; wherefore I would go to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion neither; yet I forced myself and would look on still. But quickly after, I began to think, 'How, if one of the bells should fall?' Then I chose to stand under a main beam that lay over-thwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple-door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any farther than the steeple-door; but then it came into my head, 'How, if the steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my head.

415: In these days, when I have heard others talk of what was the sin against the Holy Ghost, then would the tempter so provoke me to desire to sin that sin, that I was as if I could not, must not, neither should be quiet until I had committed it; now no sin would serve but that: if it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I would or no; and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; at other times, to leap with my head downward into some muck-hill hole, to keep my mouth from speaking.

416: But hold, it lasted not, for before I had well dined, the trouble began to go off my mind, and my heart returned to its old course; but oh, how glad was I that this trouble was gone from me, and that the fire was put out, that I might sin again without control! Wherefore, when I had satisfied nature with my food, I shook the sermon out of my mind, and to my old custom of sports and gaming I returned with great delight.

But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looked down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and other ungodly practices.

417: At this reproof I was silenced, and put to secret shame, and that, too, as I thought, before the God of heaven; wherefore, while I stood there, hanging down my head, I wished that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain to think of a reformation, for that could never be. But how it came to pass I know not, I did from this time forward so leave my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas before I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before, and another behind, to make my words have authority, now I could without it speak better, and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before.

418: Voici l'abrégé des événements: Du haut du ciel, une voix a crié vengeance contre la cité de la Destruction où vit un pécheur nommé Chrétien. Effrayé, il se lève parmi les railleries de ses voisins et part pour n'être point dévoré par le feu qui consumera les criminels. Un homme secourable, Évangéliste, lui montre le droit chemin. Un homme perfide, Sagesse-Mondaine, essaye de l'en détourner. Son camarade Maniable, qui l'avait d'abord suivi, s'embourbe dans le marais du Découragement et le quitte. Pour lui, il avance bravement à travers l'eau trouble et la boue glissante, et parvient à la porte étroite, où un sage interprète l'instruit par des spectacles sensibles et lui indique la voie de la cité céleste. Il passe devant une croix et le lourd fardeau des péchés qu'il portait à ses épaules se détache et tombe. Il grimpe péniblement la colline escarpée de la Difficulté, et parvient dans un superbe château, où Vigilant, le gardien, le remet aux mains de ses sages filles, Piété, Prudence, qui l'avertissent et l'arment contre les monstres d'enfer. Il trouve la route barrée par un de ces démons, Apollyon, qui lui ordonne d'abjurer l'obéissance du roi Céleste. Après un long combat, il le tue. Cependant la route se rétrécit, les ombres tombent plus épaisses, les flammes sulfureuses montent le long du chemin: c'est la vallée de l'Ombre de la Mort. Il la franchit, et arrive dans la ville de la Vanité, foire immense de trafics, de dissimulations et de comédies, où il passe les yeux baissés sans vouloir prendre part aux fêtes ni aux mensonges. Les gens du lieu le chargent de coups, le jettent en prison, le condamnent comme traître et révolté, brûlent son compagnon Fidèle. Échappé de leurs mains, il tombe dans celles d'un Géant, Désespoir, qui le meurtrit, le laisse sans pain dans un cachot infect, et, lui présentant des poignards et des cordes, l'exhorte à se délivrer de tant de malheurs. Il parvient enfin sur les montagnes Heureuses, d'où il aperçoit la divine cité. Pour y entrer, il ne reste à franchir qu'un courant profond où l'on perd pied, où l'eau trouble la vue, et qu'on appelle la rivière de la Mort.

419: I saw then in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch. That ditch is it into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold on the left hand, there was a very dangerous quagg into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on....

The pathway was here also exceedingly narrow, and therefore good Christian was the more put to it: for when he sought in the dark to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to top over into the mire on the other; also, when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch. Then he went on, and I heard him here sigh bitterly: for, besides the danger mentioned above, the pathway was here so dark, that often times when he lift up his foot to set forward, he knew not where or upon what he should set it next.

About the midst of this valley, I perceived the mouth of Hell to be; and it stood also hard by the way-side. Now, thought Christian, what shall I do? And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises, that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon called All-prayer: so he cried in my hearing: «O Lord, I beseech thee; deliver my soul!»—Thus he went a great while. Yet still the flame would be reaching toward him; also he heard doleful voices, and rushing to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he would be torn in pieces, or trodden down like mire in the street....

420: Then the water stood in my eyes, and I asked further: But Lord, may such a great sinner as I am be indeed accepted of thee, and be saved by thee? And I heard him say: And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.... And now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and mine affections running over with love to the name, people, and ways of Jesus Christ....

It made me see that all the world, notwithstanding all the righteousness thereof, is in a state of condemnation. It made me see that God the Father, though he be just, can justly justifie the coming sinner. It made me greatly ashamed of the vileness of my former life, and confounded me with the sense of my own ignorance; for there never came thought into my heart before now that shewed me so the beauty of Jesus Christ. It made me love an holy life, and long to do something for the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus. Yea, I thought, that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus.

421: Then the interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which, after he had reviewed a little while, the interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choked. Then said the interpreter to a damsel that stood by: Bring hither water and sprinkle the room; the which when she had done, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure.

Then said Christian: What means this?

The interpreter answered: This parlour is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel—the dust is his original sin, and inward corruptions, that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first is the Law; but she that brought that water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest that, so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about, that the room by him could not be cleansed; but that thou wast almost choked therewith,—this is to show thee that the Law, instead of cleansing the heart, by its working, from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue it.

Again, as thou sawest the damsel sprinkle the room with water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure,—this is to show thee that when the Gospel comes in and the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart, then, I say, even as thou sawest the damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of Glory to inhabit.

422: Voici une autre de ces allégories, presque spirituelle, tant elle est juste et simple.

Now, I saw in my dream that at the end of this valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mingled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly. And while I was musing what would be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave where two giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old times, by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes, etc., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered. But I have learned since that Pagan has been dead many a day; and as for the other, though he yet be alive, he is, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he has met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them.

423: Par exemple, l'œuvre de Hollar, Cités d'Allemagne.

424: Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence: so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning, he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste: then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or turn upon the floor.

425: Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day.... Here they were within sight of the city they were going to; also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof: for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven.... Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, 'Say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold thy salvation cometh! Behold, his reward is with him!' Here all the inhabitants of the country called them 'The holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out.'

Now, as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and drawing nearer to the city yet, they had a more perfect view thereof: it was built of pearls and precious stones, also the streets thereof were paved with gold; so that, by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflexion of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease: wherefore here they lay by it awhile, crying out, because of their pangs, 'If you see my Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.'

426: They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the foundation upon which the city was framed was higher than the clouds; they therefore went up through the region of the air, sweetly talking as they went, being comforted because they got safely over the river, and had such glorious companions to attend them.

The talk that they had with the shining ones was about the glory of the place; who told them, that the beauty and glory of it was inexpressible. There, said they, is 'Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect.' You are going now, said they, to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall see the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof; and when you come there, you shall have white robes given you, and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days of eternity.

427: There came also out at this time to meet them several of the king's trumpeters, clothed in white and shining raiment, who, with melodious and loud noises, made even the heavens to echo with their sound. These trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the world; and this they did with shouting and sound of trumpet.

This done, they compassed them round about on every side; some went before, some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as it were to guard them through the upper regions), continually sounding as they went, with melodious noise, in notes on high; so that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if Heaven itself was come down to meet them.

428: And now were these two men, as it were, in Heaven, before they came at it, being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing their melodious notes. Here, also, they had the city itself in view, and thought they heard all the bells therein to ring, to welcome them thereto. But, above all, the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there with such company, and that for ever and ever. Oh! by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed!

429: Now, I saw in my dream that these two men went in at the gate; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also that met them with harps and crowns, and gave to them the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, 'Enter ye into the joy of your Lord.' I also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, 'Blessing, honour, and glory, and power be to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever.'

Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun; the streets, also, were paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps, to sing praises withal.

There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord.' And after that they shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself among them.

430: Life by Keightley. «Matre probatissima et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota.» (Defensio secunda.)

431: Life by Masson. «My father destined me while yet a child to the study of polite literature.»

432: La reine Élisabeth.

433: Paradise Regained.

434: Voyez aussi les sonnets italiens et leur sentiment si religieux.

435: Apology for Smectymnus.

436: Above them all, (I) preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after, that I was confirmed in this opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; that is a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy. (Apology for Smectymnus.)

These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem.... kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitution. (Ibid.)

437: I argued to myself that, if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflouring and dishonourable. (Ibid.)

Only this my mind gave me that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight. (Ibid.)

438: Voyez passim son Traité du Divorce, qui est transparent.

439: «Quand même je n'aurais eu qu'une faible teinture du christianisme, une certaine réserve naturelle d'humeur et la discipline morale enseignée par la plus noble philosophie eussent suffi pour m'inspirer le dédain des incontinences.» (Apologie pour Smectymnus.)

440: Mot de Jean-Paul Richter. Voir un excellent article sur Milton, National Review, July, 1859.

441: 1643, à trente-cinq ans.

442: Mute and spiritless mate.

«The bashful muteness of the virgin may oftentimes hide all the unloveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation.

«A man shall find himself bound fast to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet and delightsome society.» (Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.)

Une jolie femme dira en revanche: «Je n'aime pas un homme qui porte sa tête comme un saint sacrement.»

443: Undutiful and unkind.

444: 1641. Of Reformation in England and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it.

A treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy.
The Reasons of church Government urged against Episcopacy.
Apology for Smectymnus.

445: The tenure of Kings and Magistrates.

Iconoclastes:
Defensio Populi Anglicani;
Defensio secunda.
Authoris pro se defensio.
Responsio.

446: Cette défense est écrite en latin:

«Les deux plus grandes pestes de la vie humaine et les plus hostiles à la vertu, la tyrannie et la superstition, Dieu vous en a affranchis les premiers des hommes; il vous a inspiré assez de grandeur d'âme pour juger d'un jugement illustre votre roi prisonnier vaincu par vos armes, pour le condamner et le punir, vous les premiers des mortels. Après une action si glorieuse, vous ne devez penser ni faire rien de bas ni de petit, rien qui ne soit grand et élevé. Pour atteindre cette gloire, la seule voie est de montrer que, comme vous avez vaincu vos ennemis par la guerre, de même vous pouvez dans la paix, plus courageusement que tous les autres hommes, abattre l'ambition, l'avarice, le luxe, tous les vices qui corrompent la fortune prospère et tiennent subjugués le reste des mortels,—et que vous avez pour conserver la liberté autant de modération, de tempérance et de justice que vous avez eu de valeur pour repousser la servitude.»

447: The Reformation, 272.

448: A ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth.

449: He who had the art and proper eloquence.... might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage.... infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardor, as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men.

450: Un scrivener lui fit perdre une somme de 2000 liv. sterl.

La Restauration refusa de lui payer 2000 liv. sterl. qu'il avait placées sur l'Excise-Office, et lui reprit une terre de 50 liv. par an, achetée par lui sur les biens du chapitre de Westminster.

Sa maison fut brûlée dans le grand feu de Londres.

Quand il mourut, il ne laissa en tout que 1500 liv., y compris le produit de sa bibliothèque.

451: 1554, 22^e sonnet.

452:

453: Sonnets italiens, VI, 4.

454: Voici les titres des principaux écrits en prose de Milton: History of Reformation,—the Reason of Church government urged against prelacy,—Animadversions upon the remonstrant,—Doctrine and discipline of Divorce,—Tetrachordon,—Tractate of Education,—Areopagitica,—Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,—Iconoclastes,—History of Britain,—Thesaurus linguæ latinæ,—History of Moscovy,—de Logicæ Arte, etc.

455: Professor triobolaris.

456: Saumaise disait de la mort du roi: «Horribilis nuntius aures nostras atroci vulnere, sed magis mentes perculit.»—Milton répond: «Profecto nuntius iste horribilis aut gladium multo longiorem eo quem strinxit Petrus habuerit oportet, aut aures istæ auritissimæ fuerint, quas tam longinquo vulnere perculerit.»

—«Oratorem tam insipidum et insulsum ut ne ex lacrymis quidem ejus mica salis exiguissima possit exprimi.»

«Salmasius nova quadam metamorphosi salmacis factus est.»

457: Je transcris un de ces griefs et une de ces plaintes. Le lecteur jugera par la grandeur des outrages de la grandeur des ressentiments:

«L'humble pétition du docteur Alexandre Leighton, prisonnier dans la Flotte.

«Il remontre humblement:

«Que le 17 février 1630 il fut appréhendé, revenant du sermon, par un mandat de la haute commission, et traîné le long des rues avec des haches et des bâtons jusqu'à la prison de Londres.—Que le geôlier de Newgate, étant appelé, lui mit les fers et l'emmena de haute force dans un trou à chien, infect et tombant en ruine, plein de rats et de souris, n'ayant de jour que par un petit grillage, le toit étant effondré, de sorte que la pluie et la neige battaient sur lui; n'ayant point de lit, ni de place pour faire du feu, hormis les ruines d'une vieille cheminée qui fumait: dans ce lamentable endroit, il fut enfermé environ quinze semaines, personne n'ayant permission de venir le voir, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin sa femme seule fut admise.—Que le quatrième jour après son emprisonnement, le poursuivant, avec une grande multitude, vint dans sa maison pour chercher des livres de jésuites, et traita sa femme d'une façon si barbare et si inhumaine qu'il a honte de la raconter, qu'ils dépouillèrent toutes les chambres et toutes les personnes, portant un pistolet sur la poitrine d'un enfant de cinq ans et le menaçant de le tuer s'il ne découvrait les livres....—Que pour lui il fut malade, et, dans l'opinion de quatre médecins, empoisonné, parce que tous ses cheveux et sa peau tombèrent.—Qu'au plus fort de cette maladie la cruelle sentence fut prononcée contre lui et exécutée le 26 novembre, où il reçut sur son dos nu trente-six coups d'une corde à trois brins, ses mains étant liées à un poteau.—Qu'il fut debout près de deux heures au pilori par le froid et par la neige, puis marqué d'un fer rouge au visage, le nez fendu et les oreilles coupées. Qu'après cela il fut emmené par eau à la Flotte et enfermé dans une chambre telle qu'il y fut toujours malade et au bout de huit ans jeté dans la prison commune.» Il avait soixante-douze ans.

(Neal, History of the Puritans, II, 19.)

458: Réponse au Portrait royal, ouvrage attribué au roi, en faveur du roi.

459: The sour leaven of human traditions mixed in one putrified mass with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisie in the heart of Prelates that lie basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, is the serpent's egg that will hatch an antechrist wheresoever, and ingender the same monster as big or little as the lump is which breeds him (p. 268).

460: Of Reformation in England.

461: The loss of Cicero's works alone, or those of Livy could not be repaired by all the fathers of the church. (Areopagitica.)

462: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.

463: Dans son Areopagitica.

464: What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula, to come under the fescue of an imprimatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great arguments to think himself reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done, he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that wrote before him; if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.

465: Yet these are the men cryed out against for schismatick and sectaries, as if while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united in a continuity, it can be but contiguous in this world; nay, rather, the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionnal, arises the goodly and graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure.

466: Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansionhouse, of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war has not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present with their homage and fealty the approaching Reformation. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?

467: Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

468: Le mot anglais est plus vrai et plus frappant: peasantly regard.

469: If in less noble and almost mechanick arts he is not esteemed to deserve the name of a compleat architect, an excellent painter, or the like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly regard of wages and hire, much more must we think him a most imperfect and incompleat Divine, who is so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre, that his whole Divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or bishoprick.

470: In this manner the Prelats coming from a mean and plebeian life, on a sudden, to be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare, and princely attendance, thought the plain and home-spun verity of Christ's gospel unfit any longer to hold their Lordship's acquaintance, unless the poor thread-bare matron were put into better clothes; her chast and modest veil surrounded with celestial beams, they overlaid with wanton tresses, and in a flaring attire bespeckled her with all the gaudy allurements of a whore.

471: What greater debasement can there be to Royal dignity, whose towering and stedfast heights rest upon the immovable foundations of justice and heroic virtue, than to chain it, in a dependance of subsisting or ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness of prelatry, which wants but one puff of the king to blow them down like a paste-board house built of court cards.

C'est au commencement de la guerre civile que Milton écrivait cela: il n'était pas encore républicain.

472:.... As if they could make God earthly and fleshy, because they could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual, they began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily form.... They hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocence, but of pure linnen, with other deformed and fantastick dresses, in palls and mitres, and guegaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the Flamin's vestry. Then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his Liturgies and his Lurries, till the soul by these means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshy delights, bated her wing apace downward; and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous collegue the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high-soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and drailing carcase to plod on the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity. (Of Reformation in England.)

473: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered, unexercised and unbreathed virtue, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. (P. 429.)

474: He never left baiting and goring the successor of his best Lord Constantine by his barking curses and excommunications. (P. 264.)

475: No envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring. (P. 427.)

476: Whatsoever either time or the heedless hand of blind chance has drawn down to this present in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells, or shrubs, unpick'd, unchosen, those are the Fathers. (On Prelatical Episcopacy.)

477: For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a kind of martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and soft essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life.

478: The Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth or perfected those catalogues, and expurging Indexes that rake through the entrails of many an old good author with a violation worse than any that could be offered to his tomb. (P. 426.)

479: A man may be an heretic in the truth if he believes things only because his pastor says so.... The very truth he holds becomes his heresie.... A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon his trade.... What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toyling and to find himself out some factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs? Some Divine of note, and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, in his custody; and indeed makes the person of this man his religion. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual moveable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supt, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and, after the malmsey, or some well-spiced beverage, and better breakfasted, his religion walks abroad at night, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion.

480: Quand il est simplement comique, il arrive comme Swift et Hogarth à la bizarrerie rude et drolatique: «A bishop's foot that has all his toes (maugre the gout) and a linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of the prelat himself; who being a pluralist may, under one surplice, hide four benefices, besides that great metropolitan toe.»

481: The table of communion now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with a bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramental bread, as familiar as his tavern bisket.

482: They shall be thrown eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful controul, the trample and spurn of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercice a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodded vassals of perdition.

483: When I recall to mind, at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of Error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation, by Divine power, strook through the black and settled night of ignorance and Anti-Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven.

484: Thou, therefore, that sitst in light and glory inapprochable, Parent of Angels and Men! Next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King, redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and Thou, the third substance of Divine infinitude, illuminating Spirit; the joy and solace of created thing! look upon this Thy poor and almost spent, and expiring Church.... O let them not bring about their damned designs,... to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of the morning sing....

485: O Thou the ever-begotten light, and perfect image of thy Father,... who is there that cannot trace Thee now in Thy beamy walke through the midst of Thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness among us, through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken with the mention of their gold than of their starry light? Come, therefore, O Thou that hast the seven starres in Thy right hand, appoint Thy chosen priests, according to their orders and courses of old, to minister before Thee, and duely to dresse and poure out the consecrated oil into Thy holy and everburning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon Thy servants over all the land to this effect, and stirred up their vowes as the sound of many waters about Thy throne.... O perfect and accomplish Thy glorious acts.... Come forth out of Thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the Earth; put ou the visible robes of Thy imperial majesty; take up that unlimited scepter which Thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed Thee; for now the voice of Thy bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.

486: Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.

487: Voyez l'hymne sur la Nativité, entre autres les premières strophes. Voyez aussi Lycidas.

488: