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Now thus to accommodate and reconcile poetry to the doctrines of philosophy strips it of its fabulous and personated parts, and makes those things which it delivers usefully to acquire also the reputation of gravity; and over and above, it inclines the soul of a young man to receive the impressions of philosophical precepts. For he will hereby be enabled to come to them not altogether destitute of some sort of relish of them, not as to things that he has heard nothing of before, nor with an head confusedly full of the false notions which he hath sucked in from the daily tattle of his mother and nurse,—yea, sometimes too of his father and pedant,—who have been wont to speak of rich men as the happy men and mention them always with honor, and to express themselves concerning death and pain with horror, and to look on virtue without riches and glory as a thing of nought and not to be desired. Whence it comes to pass, that when such youths first do hear things of a quite contrary nature from philosophers, they are surprised with a kind of amazement, trouble, and stupid astonishment, which makes them afraid to entertain or endure them, except they be dealt with as those who come out of very great darkness into the light of the bright sun, that is, be first accustomed for a while to behold those doctrines in fabulous authors, as in a kind of false light, which hath but a moderate brightness and is easy to be looked on and borne without disturbance to the weak sight. For having before heard or read from poets such things as these are,— Mourn at one’s birth, as th’ inlet t’ all that grieves; But joy at death, as that which man relieves; Of worldly things a mortal needs but twain; The spring supplies his drink, the earth his grain: O tyranny, to barbarous nations dear! This in all human happiness is chief, To know as little as we can of grief; The first two quotations are from Euripides (the first from his Cresphontes); the other two are from unknown tragic poets. (G.) they are the less disturbed and offended when they hear from philosophers that no man ought to be much concerned about death; that the riches of nature are defined and limited; that the happiness of man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of wealth or vastness of employments or height of authority and power, but in freedom from sorrow, in moderation of passions, and in such a temper of mind as measures all things by the use of Nature.
