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creatures and the imposition of names was the occupation and pleasure of Adam in Paradisea.

8. THE pleasures of speculation have been sometimes so great, so intense, and so engrossing all the powers of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other pleasure. It has so called together all the spirits to that one work, that there has been no supply to carry on the inferior operations of nature. Contemplation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst but of that after knowledge. How frequent and exalted a pleasure did David find from his meditation in the divine call! All the day long it was the theme of his thoughts: the affairs of state, the government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, but it was this only that refreshed his mind. How short of this are the delights of the epicure! how vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! indeed as different as the silence of Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash.

a Bacon from 1 to 8.

Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and a prevailing thought: a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things; and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension and enlarging the territories of

reason a.

9. In Ascham's Schoolmaster he says, "Before I went into Germany I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of the noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parents, the Duke and Dutchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber reading Phædon Platonis in Greek, and this with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccacio. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her why she would lose such pastime in the park?' smiling she answered me, 'I wisse all their sport in the park

a South.

6

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is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true

pleasure meant.' 'And how came you, Madam,' quoth I, to this deep knowledge of pleasure? and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men have attained 'thereunto?' 'I will tell you,' quoth she, and 'tell you a truth,' &c. "

10. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden, after being mewed up in it the whole of one year, said, "I no sooner come into the library but I bolt the door after me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself: and in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men who know not this happiness.'

99

11. The things, says Boyle, for which I hold life valuable are the satisfaction that accrues from the

improvement of knowledge and the exercise of piety.

12. La lecture est la nourriture de l'esprit": c'est par elle que nous connoissons notre Créateur, ses ouvrages, et surtout, nous memes et nos blables b.

sem

13. I persuade myself that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge; and especially of that sort which relates to our duty and conduces to our happiness. In these inquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmering of truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavour to trace it to its source, without any reserve or caution of pushing the discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the public. I look upon the discovery of any thing which is true, as a valuable acquisition to society, which cannot possibly hurt, or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever; for they

a

Knowledge is "pabulum animi," says Bacon; and the nature of man's appetites is as the Israelites in the desert, who were weary of manna, and would fain have turned ad ollas carnium.

b Gibbon.

all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coincide with each other: and like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general currenta.

14. Against the inconveniences and vexations of long life may be set the pleasure of discovering truth, one of the greatest pleasures that age affordsb.

15. What an heaven lives a scholar in, that at once in one close room can daily converse with all the glorious martyrs and fathers; that can single out at pleasure, either sententious Tertullian, or grave Cyprian, or resolute Hierome, or flowing Chrysostome, or divine Ambrose, or devout Bernard, or (who alone is all these) heavenly Augustine, and talk with them, and hear their wise and holy counsels, verdicts, resolutions: yea, to rise higher, with courtly Esay, with learned Paul, with all their fellow prophets, apostles; yea more, like another Moses with God himself, in them both! Let the world con

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