It was a very trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and compassion.

When the mind or ruling principle is properly regulated, it can with ease and at any time adapt itself to the various events of life, which are presented to it for the subject of its operations. For it is not particularly attached to any one subject or mode of action. It exerts itself with a preference indeed on things more agreeable, but with a reserve of acquiescence; and if chance throw anything of a contrary quality in its way, it takes that for the subject of its philosophy to work upon; which, like a strong fire, converts and assimilates that to its own substance, which would extinguish a slight flame, triumphs over all resistance, and becomes more brilliant by this addition of combustible matter.

With such deceits he gain’d their easy hearts,
Too prone to credit his perfidious arts.
What Diomede, nor Thetis’ greater son,
A thousand ships, nor ten years’ siege, had done—
False tears and fawning words the city won.

Truth, Sir, is a profound Sea, and few there be that dare wade deep enough to find out the bottom on’t. Besides, Sir, I’m afraid the Line of your Understanding mayn’t be long enough.

They have also ascribed divinity, and built temples to mere accidents and qualities, such as are time, night, day, peace, concord, love, contention, virtue, honour, health, rust, fever, and the like; which when they prayed for or against they prayed to, as if there were ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall or withholding that good or evil for or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own wit by the name of Muses, their own ignorance by the name of Fortune, their own lust by the name of Cupid, their own rage by the name of Furies, their own privy members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions to Incubi and Succubæ: insomuch as there was nothing which a poet could introduce as a person in his poem which they did not make either a god or a devil.

‘Tis one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from nature. The copier is that servile imitator, to whom Horace gives no better name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be a man. Raphael imitated nature; they who copy one of Raphael’s pieces, imitate but him, for his work is their original. They translate him, as I do Virgil; and fall as short of him, as I of Virgil. There is a kind of invention in the imitation of Raphael: for though the thing was in nature, yet the idea of it was his own. Ulysses travel’d, so did Aeneas; but neither of them were the first travelers: for Cain went into the land of Nod, before they were born: and neither of the poets ever heard of such a man. If Ulysses had been kill’d at Troy, yet Aeneas must have gone to sea, or he could never have arrived in Italy. But the designs of the two poets were as different as the courses of their heroes, one went home, and the other sought a home. To return to my first similitude. Suppose Apelles and Raphael had each of them painted a burning Troy; might not the modern painter have succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the town on fire? for the draughts of both were taken from the ideas which they had of nature. Cities had been burnt before either of them were in being.

There are surely other worlds than this: other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude, other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?

As for the herd of mankind, he [i.e. the rational man] is too well acquainted with their conduct with their conduct both in private and in public; their infamous connections, the dissipation of their days and the revels of their nights. He cannot therefore be very ambitious of the praise or approbation of such capricious people, who are often at a loss to please themselves.

Out of nothing, nothing can be brought;
And that which is, can ne’er be turned to naught.

Or if we do applaud, honour and admire, quota pars, how small a part, in respect of the whole world, never so much as hears our names! how few take notice of us! how slender a tract, as scant as Alcibiades his land in a map! And yet every man must and will be immortal, as he hopes, and extend his fame to our antipodes, whenas half, no, not a quarter, of his own province or city neither knows nor hears of him: but say they did, what’s a city to a kingdom, a kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world itself that must have an end, if compared to the least visible star in the firmament, eighteen times bigger than it? and then if those stars be infinite, and every star there be a sun, as some will, and, as this sun of ours, hath his planets about him, all inhabited, what proportion bear we to them, and where’s our glory?