Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

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* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident amici ridet mundus , in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how they got there, being homines intellectûs pulverulenti , as Trincauellius notes; they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; homines parvulissimi as Lemnius , whom Alcuin herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship, libant , they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in their sacrificials, Cerealia, May-games : Truth is the game all these hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures, humidum radicale exsiccant , as Galen , in his counsels to one of these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this nunquam metam attingunt , and how should they? they bowle awry, shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that Truth absolute on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede Queene Opinion predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever mutable Lampas , me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his sight be strong to endure the vision of Very Truth , which is in the heavens, the vision beatifical, as Anianus expounds in his argument against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were dizzards, fools, gothamites . * * * * but and if Very Truth be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin , but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things , melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres , on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her. * * * * *

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This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to Villanovus his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a morning as gross, fat, hebetant, feral , altogether fitter for wild beasts than men, e contra commendeth this herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the suburbes , as airiest, quietest, loci musis propriores , free from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick, and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandlish birds, fishes, crocodiles, Indians , mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the common sort, plebs , the rabble, duelloes with fists, proper to this island , at which the stiletto'd and secrete Italian laughs.) Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a bezo las manos to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses dilatis naribus snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy, dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour, and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so great a citty can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse, mourners, plumes, mutæ personæ, those personate actors that will weep if yee skew them a piece of silver ; none of those customed civilities of children, kinsfolk, dependants , following the coffin; he died a poore man, his friends assessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck by him so long as he had a penny , now leave him, forsake him, shun him, desert him; they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. or if he have any which survive him, sua negotia agunt , they mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, inclination, extremum munus perficere , to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, quantum potuit , as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, minims , hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun for them , have no buriall at all, they care not. O nefas! Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been without a pall , nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood that could be had, naked , having none of the ordinary symptomata of a funerall, those locularii which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, and none black : (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a Crœsus , a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington , what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies , had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, a Mæcenas , while as in very deede he was nothing lesse: what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fortieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts, (they care not if he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning Gnathoes , tramping on foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the right: Hæc sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. The follies are enough to give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene.