235 Nor can I think such life in vain is lent, 241 245 249 That with our days our pains and pleasures end, For none of them my error shall deride; 255 'Tis fit.our bodies should be out of pain. 260 The same uneasiness which ev'ry thing That joy to you which it gives me 'twill give. 266 OF PRUDENCE. PREFACE TO THE FOLLOWING TRANSLATION. GOING this last summer to visit the Wells, I took an occasion (by the way) to wait upon an ancient and honourable friend of mine, whom I found diverting his (then solitary) retirement with the Latin original of this translation, which (being out of print) I had never seen before. When I looked upon it, I saw that it had formerly passed through two learned hands, not without approbation, which were Ben Johnson and Sir Kenelm Digby: but I found it (where I shall never find myself) in the service of a better master, the Earl of Bristol, of whom I shall say no more: for I love not to improve the honour of the living by impairing that of the dead; and my own profession hath taught me not to erect new superstructurès upon an old ruin. He was pleased to recommend it to me for my companion at the Wells, where I liked the enter tainment it gave me so well, that I undertook to redeem it from an obsolete English disguise, wherein an old Monk had clothed it, and to make as becoming a new vest for it as I could. The author was a person of quality in Italy, his name Mancini, which family matched since with the sister of Cardinal Mazarine; he was contemporary to Petrarch and Mantuan, and not long before Torquato Tasso, which shews that the age they lived in was not so unlearned as that which preceded or that which followed. The author wrote upon the four cardinal virtues; but I have translated only the two first, not to turn the kindness I intended to him into an injury; for the two last are little more than repetitions and recitals of the first; and (to make a just excuse for him) they could not well be otherwise, since the two last virtues are but descendants from the first, Prudence being the true mother of Temperance, and true Fortitude the child of Justice. WISDOM's first progress is to take a view 5 10 16 Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads, Nor what thou dost not know, to know pretend. 20 25 In equal scales two doubtful matters lay, [weigh. Thou may'st choose safely that which most doth 'Tis not secure this place or that to guard, If any other entrance stand unbarr'd. He that escapes the serpent's teeth may fail, If he himself secures not from his tail. 31 Who saith 'Who could such ill events expect?' 35 |