A silver stream shall roll his waters near,
Gilt with the sun-beams here and there;
On whose enamel'd bank I'll walk,
And see how prettily they smile, and hear
How prettily they talk.

Ah wretched and too solitary he,
Who loves not his own company !
He'll feel the weight of 't many a day,
Unless he call in sin or vanity

To help to bear 't away.

Oh Solitude, first state of human kind!
Which bless'd remain'd, till man did find
Even his own helper's company.

As soon as two, alas! together join'd,
The serpent made up three.

Thee God himself, through countless ages, thee
His sole companion chose to be;

Thee, sacred Solitude, alone,
Before the branchy head of number's tree
Sprang from the trunk of one.

Thou (though men think thine an unactive part)
Dost break and time the' unruly heart,
Which else would know no settled pace,
Making it move, well-managed by thy art,
With swiftness and with grace.

Thou the faint beams of reason's scatter'd light Dost, like a burning-glass, unite;

Dost multiply the feeble heat,

And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright And noble fires beget.

Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks, I see
The monster London laugh at me;
I should at thee too, foolish city!
If it were fit to laugh at misery;
But thy estate I pity.

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.

III.

OF OBSCURITY.

"NAM neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis;
Nec vixit malè, qui natus moriensque fefellit'."

God made not pleasures only for the rich;
Nor have those men without their share too lived,
Who both in life and death the world deceived.
This seems a strange sentence, thus literally trans-
lated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the
men of business (for who else can deceive the
world?); whereas it is in commendation of those
who live and die so obscurely, that the world
takes no notice of them. This Horace calls de-
ceiving the world; and in another place uses the
same phrase2,

Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitæ."
The secret tracks of the deceiving life.

1 Hor. 1 Ep. xvii. 9.

2 Hor. 1 Ep. xviii. 103.

It is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear up to that sense; and therefore Mr. Broom translates it very well

Or from a life, led, as it were, by stealth.

Yet we say in our language, a thing deceives our sight, when it passes before us unperceived; and we may say well enough, out of the same author3, Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine, we strive The cares of life and troubles to deceive.

But that is not to deceive the world, but to de-
ceive ourselves, as Quintilian says*, "vitam fal-
lere," to draw on still, and amuse, and deceive,
our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal
period, and fall into that pit which nature hath
prepared for it. The meaning of all this is no
more than that most vulgar saying,
"Bene qui
latuit, bene vixit," He has lived well, who has lain
well hidden; which, if it be a truth, the world (I
will swear) is sufficiently deceived: for my part,
I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of
life is in incognito. What a brave privilege is it,
to be free from all contentions, from all envying
or being envied, from receiving and from paying
all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very
delightful pastime, for two good and agreeable
friends to travel up and down together, in places
where they are by nobody known, nor know any
body. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates,
when they walked invisibly about the fields and
streets of Carthage. Venus herself,

A vail of thicken'd air around them cast,
That none might know, or see them, as they pass'd 3.
Declam. de Apib.

3 2 Sat. vii. 114.

5 Virg. Æn. i. 415.

The common story of Demosthenes' confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tankerwoman say, as he passed, "This is that Demosthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any): but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the goodfortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known, or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that: whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the

best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, "This is that Bucephalus,” or, “This is that Incitatus,” when they were led prancing through the streets, as "This is that Alexander," or, "This is that Domitian;” and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.

I love and commend a true good-fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and, like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man, whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit): this inno