SIR THOMAS BROWNE

1605-1682

OF PROVIDENCE AND FORTUNE

THIS is the ordinary and open way of His providence, which art and industry have in a good part discovered; whose effects we may fortell without an oracle. To foreshew these is not prophecy but prognostication. There is another way, full of meanders and labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides; and that is a more particular and obscure method of His providence; directing the operations of individual and single essences: this we call fortune; that serpentine and crooked line, whereby He draws those actions His wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way: this cryptic and involved method of His providence have I ever admired; nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes or dangers, and hits of chance, with a bezo las manos to Fortune, or a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram in the thicket came thither by accident: human reason would have said, that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh's daughter. What a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph! able to convert a stoic. Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance; but at the last well examined, prove the mere hand of God. 'Twas not dumb chance that, to discover the fougade, or powder-plot contrived a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of '88 the better for that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to our dishonour, and the partiality of fortune; to wit the tempests and contrariety of winds. King

Philip did not detract from the nation, when he said he sent his armada to fight with men, and not to combat with the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between the powers and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of reason we may promise the victory to the superior but when unexpected accidents slip in, and unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must proceed from a power that owes no obedience to those axioms; where, as in the writing upon the wall, we may behold the hand, but see not the spring that moves it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the grand Seignior proudly said, if they should trouble him, as they did the Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw it into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry of the people, but the mercy of God, that hath disposed them to such a thriving genius; and to the will of His providence, that dispenseth His favour to each country in their preordinate season. All cannot be happy at once; for, because the glory of one state depends upon the ruin of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, and must obey the swing of that wheel, not moved by intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical points, according to their predestined periods. For the lives, not only of men, but of commonwealths and the whole world, run not upon a helix that still enlargeth; but on a circle, where, arriving to their meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.—Religio Medici.

1 A spiral, as of wire in a coil.

THOMAS FULLER

1608-1661

OF JESTING

HARMLESS mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirits: wherefore jesting is not unlawful if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality, or

season.

1. It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting. The Earl of Leicester, knowing that Queen Elizabeth was much delighted to see a gentleman dance well, brought the master of the dancing school to dance before her. 'Pish,' said the Queen, 'it is his profession, I will not see him.' She liked it not where it was a master quality, but where it attended on other perfections. The same may we say of jesting.

2. Jest not with the two-edged sword of God's Word. Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the font, or to drink healths in, but the church chalice? And know the whole art is learnt at the first admission, and profane jests will come without calling. If in the troublesome days of King Edward the Fourth, a citizen in Cheapside was executed as a traitor for saying he would make his son heir to the Crown, though he only meant his own house, having a crown for the sign; more dangerous it is to wit-wanton it with the majesty of God. Wherefore, if without thine intention, and against thy will, by chance medley thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge and pray to God to forgive thee.

3. Wanton jests make fools laugh, and wise men frown. Seeing we are civilized Englishmen, let us not be naked savages in our talk. Such rotten speeches are worst in withered age, when men run after that sin in their words which flieth from them in the deed.

4. Let not thy jests, like mummy, be made of dead men's flesh. Abuse not any that are departed; for to wrong their memories is to rob their ghosts of their winding-sheets.

5. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh, it is cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches! Neither flout any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbs.

6. He that relates another man's wicked jests with delight adopts them to be his own. Purge them therefore from their poison. If the profaneness may be severed from the wit, it is like a lamprey; take out the string in the back, it may make good meat. But if the staple conceit consists in profaneness, then it is a viper, all poison, and meddle not with it.

7. He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain. Yet some think their conceits, like mustard, not good except they bite. We read that all those who were born in England the year after the beginning of the great mortality 1349, wanted their four cheek-teeth. Such let thy jests be, that may not grind the credit of thy friend, and make not jests so long till thou becomest one.

8. No time to break jests when the heart-strings are about to be broken. No more showing of wit when the head is to be cut off, like that dying man, who, when the priest coming to him to give him extreme unction, asked of him where his feet were, answered, 'At the end of my legs.' But at such a time jests are unmannerly crepitus ingenii. And let those take heed who end here with Democritus, that they begin not with Heraclitus hereafter.-The Holy and Profane State.

OF SELF-PRAISING

1. He whose own worth doth speak, need not speak his own worth. Such boasting sounds proceed from emptiness of desert: whereas the conquerors in the Olympian

G

games did not put on the laurels on their own heads, but waited till some other did it. Only anchorets that want company may crown themselves with their own commendations.

2. It showeth more wit but no less vanity to commend one's self, not in a straight line, but by reflection. Some sail to the port of their own praise by a side wind; as when they dispraise themselves, stripping themselves naked of what is their due, that the modesty of the beholders may clothe them with it again, or when they flatter another to his face, tossing the ball to him that he may throw it back again to them; or when they commend that quality wherein themselves excel, in another man, though absent, whom all know far their inferior in that faculty; or lastly to omit other ambushes men set to surprise praise, when they send the children of their own brain to be nursed by another man, and commend their own works in a third person; but if challenged by the company that they were authors of them themselves, with their tongues they faintly deny it, and with their faces strongly affirm it.

3. Self-praising comes most naturally from a man when it comes most violently from him in his own defence. For though modesty binds a man's tongue to the peace in this point, yet being assaulted in his credit he may stand upon his guard, and then he doth not so much praise as purge himself. One braved a gentleman to his face, that in skill and valour he came far behind him: It is true,' said the other, for when I fought with you, you ran away before me.' In such a case, it was well returned, and without any just aspersion of pride.

4. He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil. Yet some glory in their shame, counting the stains of sin the best complexion for their souls. These men make me believe it may be true what Mandeville writes of the isle of Somabarre, in the East Indies, that all the nobility thereof brand their faces with a hot iron in token of honour.