ABSTRACT
Hence it twice occurred that, overstimulated by his prolonged studies in early adolescence, he fell ill of a fever attended by the greatest peril; and was forced to slacken the reins in sports, until, the breakdown of his health having been repaired, more fit and more active he returned to the Muses. Let them who may have the power tell how, meanwhile, unsettled spirits strove within that single
soul; for at one moment he judged it inhuman to abjure the care of the body; at another moment not to proceed with his studies he deemed a reproach; he considered that care could not be given to both without impairing one or the other; he reckoned that a higher consideration could not be given to one and at the same time the soundness of the other be complete. And, to be sure, since he craved to be wise rather than to be strong, he would almost have failed in both had he not given himself over, though unwillingly, to recreation, and mingled, by way of spice, certain sportive artspoetic, comic, musical-with his more serious studies. He amused himself with them after the manner of youth, but within limits; he was somewhat wanton, indeed, but observed a measure and felt shame. On that account he first consigned his Stella (truly an elegant and pleasant work) to darkness and then favoured giving it to the fire. Nay, more, he desired to smother the Arcadia (offspring of no ill pen) at the time of its birth. And in it he so cultivated the comic that he avoided the scurrilous; he so pursued the dramatic that he shunned the obscene; he so composed satires that he nicely ridiculed satyrs full of vices and their little grandsons full of wantonness. The blindness, vanity, and fickleness of Cupid, the harlots (allurements and banes of adolescents), parasites evilly gained, procurers evilly conditioned, the slippery ways of adolescence, the weak ways of youth, the wretched ways of age (upon which we cannot enter without peril, stand without irksomeness, or run without falling)—how cleverly in that work, illustrious Herbert, has he presented these for us, decked out and made odious! How, and with how sharp a sting, in a sort of dithyramb he has described, and censured, those Demaenetuses1
with white hair, goatish beard, phlegmy nostrils who pursue pleasures of love at an unseasonable age and do not put away voluptuousness from them until their property, business, love, and lust are at once extinguished, together with life! Having come to fear, however, that his Stella and Arcadia might render the souls of readers more yielding instead of better, and having turned to worthier subjects, he very much wished to sing something that would abide the censure of the most austere Cato. For, truly, let us read the Week of the great Bartas, made English by Sidney; let us contemplate the psalms of the Hebrew poet, ah, how choicely set forth, first explicitly and then paraphrastically, each one, by a new metre. When others, with dirty hands, strive to cleanse these
psalms, they seem to seek a knot in a bulrush and (to put the matter in a word) while they polish they pollute. I pass over letters of most elegant style, in metrical and prose form, which he addressed to the Queen, to friends, but particularly to your honoured mother (inheritor of his wit and genius); if it shall be deemed well to let these epistles go into the everlasting memory of his race and of the republic of letters, may I die if, compared to them, Horace will not seem stupid, Cicero mediocre, and Ovid simply nothing at all, or weak.
