A DEFENCE OF ROMANCES IT hath been rather the fate than merit of romances in all ages to be aspersed with these vices, whereof they were not only innocent, but to whose antidoting virtues they might justly pretend; for, whereas they are judged to be both the fire and faggots whereby love's flames are both kindled and alimented, I believe, verily, that there is nothing can so easily extinguish them; for as those who have at court seen numbers of peerless and well decked beauties can hardly become enamoured of an ordinary country maid; so those who have seen a Philoclea or Cleopatra depencilled by the curious wits of Sidney and Scuderie, will hardly be invassalled by the (to them scarce approaching) traits of these whom this age garlands for admired beauties. Others, forsooth, accuse them for robbing us of our precious time; but this reproach is ill founded, for if the romance be abject none will trifle away their time in reading it, except those who would misspend it however, and if they be excellent, then time is rather spent than misspent in leafing them over. There is also a third race of detractors who condemn them as lies; but since their authors propose them not with an intention to deceive, they cannot properly be reputed such and albeit they seem but fables, yet who would unkernel them, would find huddled up in them real truths; and, as naturalists observe, those kernels are best where the shells are hardest, and those metals are noblest, which are mudded over with most earth. But to leave such fanatics in the bedlam of their own fancies, who should blush to trace in those paths which the famous Sydney, Scuderie, Barkley, and Broghill have beaten for them, besides thousands of ancients and moderns, ecclesiastics and laicks, Spaniards, French, and Italians, to remunerate whose endeavours fame hath wreathed garlands (to betemple their ingenious and ingenuous heads) which shall never fade while learning flourishes? I shall speak nothing of that A DEFENCE OF ROMANCES IT hath been rather the fate than merit of romances in all ages to be aspersed with these vices, whereof they were not only innocent, but to whose antidoting virtues they might justly pretend; for, whereas they are judged to be both the fire and faggots whereby love's flames are both kindled and alimented, I believe, verily, that there is nothing can so easily extinguish them; for as those who have at court seen numbers of peerless and well decked beauties can hardly become enamoured of an ordinary country maid; so those who have seen a Philoclea or Cleopatra depencilled by the curious wits of Sidney and Scuderie, will hardly be invassalled by the (to them scarce approaching) traits of these whom this age garlands for admired beauties. Others, forsooth, accuse them for robbing us of our precious time; but this reproach is ill founded, for if the romance be abject none will trifle away their time in reading it, except those who would misspend it however, and if they be excellent, then time is rather spent than misspent in leafing them over. There is also a third race of detractors who condemn them as lies; but since their authors propose them not with an intention to deceive, they cannot properly be reputed such: and albeit they seem but fables, yet who would unkernel them, would find huddled up in them real truths; and, as naturalists observe, those kernels are best where the shells are hardest, and those metals are noblest, which are mudded over with most earth. But to leave such fanatics in the bedlam of their own fancies, who should blush to trace in those paths which the famous Sydney, Scuderie, Barkley, and Broghill have beaten for them, besides thousands of ancients and moderns, ecclesiastics and laicks, Spaniards, French, and Italians, to remunerate whose endeavours fame hath wreathed garlands (to betemple their ingenious and ingenuous heads) which shall never fade while learning flourishes? I shall speak nothing of that noble romance, written by a bishop, which the entreaty of all the Eastern churches could never prevail with him to disown; and I am confident, that where romances are written by excellent wits, and perused by intelligent readers, that the judgment may pick more sound information from them, than from history, for the one teacheth us only what was done, and the other what should be done; and whereas romances present to us virtue in its holiday robes, history presents her only to us in those ordinary, and spotted suits which she wears while she is busied in her servile and lucrative employments; and as many would be incited to virtue and generosity, by reading in romances, how much it hath been honoured, so contrarywise, many are deterred by historical experience from being virtuous, knowing that it hath been oftener punished than acknowledged. Romances are those vessels which strain the crystal streams of virtue from the puddle of interest; whereas history suffers the memory to quaff them off in their mixed impurity; by these likewise lazy ladies and luxurious gallants are allured to spend in their chambers some hours, which else the one would consecrate to the bed, and the other to the brothel and albeit essays be the choicest pearls in the jewel house of moral philosophy, yet I ever thought that they were set off to the best advantage, and appeared with the greatest lustre, when they were laced upon a romance; so that the curiosity might be satisfied, as well as the judgment informed, especially in this age wherein the appetite of men's judgments is become so queasy, that it can relish nothing that is not either vinegared with satires, or sugared with eloquence. (From Preface to Aretina.) WHY MAN FELL THAT brain hath too little pia mater, that is too curious to know why God, who evidences so great a desire to save poor man, and is so powerful as that his salvation needed never have run the hazard, if his infinite wisdom had so decreed, did yet suffer him to fall for if we enter once the list of that debate, our reason is too weak to bear the burden of so great a difficulty. And albeit it may be answered, that God might have restrained man, but that restraint did not stand with the freedom of man's will which God hath bestowed upon him; yet, this answer stops not the mouth of the difficulty. For certainly, if one should detain a madman from running over a precipice, he could not be thereby said to have wronged his liberty and seeing man is, by many divines, allowed a freedom of will, albeit he must of necessity do what is evil, and that his freedom is salved by a liberty to choose only one of more evils, it would appear strange why his liberty might not have consisted well enough with a moral impossibility of sinning, and might not have been abundantly conserved in his freedom to choose one of more goods: yet, these reasonings are the calling God to an account; and so impious. For, if God had first created man surrounded with our present infirmities, could we have complained? Why then should we now complain, seeing we are but fallen to a better estate than we deserved; seeing we stumbled not for want of light, but because we extinguished our own light; and seeing our Saviour's dying for us may yet reinstate us in a happier estate than that from which we are now fallen ? Albeit the glass of my years hath not yet turned five and twenty, yet the curiosity I have to know the different limbos of departed souls, and to view the card of the region of death, would give me abundance of courage to encounter this king of terrors, though I were a pagan; but when I consider what joys are prepared for them who fear the Almighty; and what craziness attends such as sleep in Methusalem's cradle, I pity them who make long life one of the oftest repeated petitions of their Paternoster; and yet those sure are the more advanced in folly, who desire to have their names enshrined, after death, in the airy monument of fame: whereas it is one of the promises made to the elect, that they shall rest from their labours, and their works shall follow them. Most men's mouths are so foul, that it is a punishment to be much in them: for my own part, I desire the same good offices from my good name that I do from my clothes; which is to screen me from the violence of exterior accidents. As those criminals might be judged distracted, who, being condemned to die, would spend their short reprival in disputing about the situation and fabric of their gibbets: so may I justly think those literati mad, who spend the short time allotted them for repentance, in debating about the seat of hell, and the torments of tortured spirits. To satisfy my curiosity, I was once resolved, with the Platonic, to take the promise of some dying |