The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (29 page)

Some have memorized that Agrippa seeing his counsel in that case rejected, and that the Emperor, notwithstanding his unfortunate presage, was prosperous and successful, within few days after died frantic and desperate.

Alphonso, King of Naples, in like case, before the rumour of the French King's coming into Italy, had a vision in the night presented unto him of Aeneas' ghost having Turnus in chase, and Juno Pronuba coming betwixt them, and parting them; whereby he guessed that by marriage their jarring kingdoms should be united. But far otherwise it fell out, for the French King came indeed and he was driven thereby into such a melancholy ecstasy that he thought the very fowls of the air would snatch his crown from him, and no bough or arbour that overshadowed him but enclosed him and took him prisoner, and that not so much but the stones of the street sought to justle him out of his throne.

These examples I allege, to prove there is no certainty in dreams, and that they are but according to our devisings and meditations in the daytime.

I confess the saints and martyrs of the Primitive Church had unfallible dreams fore-running their ends, as Policarpus and other; but those especially proceeded from heaven and not from any vaporous dreggy parts of our blood or our brains.

For this cause the Turks banish learning from amongst
them, because it is every day setting men together by the ears, moving strange contentions and alterations, and making his professors faint-hearted and effeminate. Much more requisite were it that out of our civil Christian commonwealths we severely banish and exterminate those fabulous commentaries on toyish fantasies which fear-benumb and effeminate the hearts of the stoutest, cause a man without any ground to be jealous of his own friends and his kinsfolks, and withdraw him from the search and insight into more excellent things, to stand all his whole life sifting and winnowing dry rubbish chaff, whose best bottom quintescence proves in the end but sandy gravel and cockle.

Molestations and cares enough the ordinary course of our life tithes of his own accord unto us, though we seek not a knot in a bulrush,
⁸²
or stuff not our night-pillows with thistles to increase our disturbance.

In our sleep we are aghasted and terrified with the disordered skirmishing and conflicting of our sensitive faculties. Yet with this terror and aghastment cannot we rest ourselves satisfied, but we must pursue and hunt after a further fear in the recordation and too busy examining our pains over-passed.

Dreams in my mind if they have any premonstrances in them, the preparative fear of that they so premonstrate and denounce is far worse than the mischief itself by them denounced and premonstrated.

So there is no long sickness but is worse than death, for death is but a blow and away, whereas sickness is like a Chancery suit, which hangs two or three year ere it can come to a judgment.

Oh, a consumption is worse than a
Capias ad Ligatum
:
⁸³
to nothing can I compare it better than to a reprieve after a man is condemned, or to a boy with his hose about his heels, ready to be whipped, to whom his master stands preaching a long time all law and no gospel ere he proceed
to execution. Or rather it is as a man should be roasted to death and melt away by little and little, whiles physicians like cooks stand stuffing him out with herbs and basting him with this oil and that syrup.

I am of the opinion that to be famished to death is far better, for his pain in seven or eight days is at an end, whereas he that is in a consumption continues languishing many years ere death have mercy on him.

The next plague and the nearest that I know in affinity to a consumption is long depending hope frivolously defeated, than which there is no greater misery on earth, and so
per consequents
no men in earth more miserable than courtiers. It is a cowardly fear that is not resolute enough to despair. It is like a poor hunger-starved wretch at sea, who still in expectation of a good voyage endures more miseries than Job. He that writes this can tell, for he hath never had good voyage in his life but one, and that was to a fortunate blessed island near those pinacle rocks called the Needles. Oh, it is a purified continent, and a fertile plot fit to seat another paradise, where, or in no place, the image of the ancient hospitality is to be found.

While I live I will praise it and extol it for the true magnificence and continued honourable bounty that I saw there.

Far unworthy am I to spend the least breath of commendation in the extolling so delightful and pleasant a Tempe,
⁸⁴
or once to consecrate my ink with the excellent mention of the thrice-noble and illustrious chieftain under whom it is flourishingly governed.

That rare ornament of our country, learned Master Camden,
⁸⁵
whose desertful name is universally admired throughout Christendom, in the last re-polished edition of his
Britannia
hath most elaborate and exactly described the sovereign plenteous situation of that isle, as also the inestimable happiness it inherits, it being patronized and carefully
protected by so heroical and courageous a commander.
⁸⁶

Men that have never tasted that full spring of his liberality, wherewith, in my most forsaken extremities, right graciously he hath deigned to revive and refresh me, may rashly, at first sight, implead
⁸⁷
me of flattery and not esteem these my fervent terms as the necessary repayment of due debt, but words idly begotten with good looks, and in an over-joyed humour of vain hope slipped from me by chance; but therein they shall show themselves too uncivil injurious, both to my devoted observant duty and the condign
⁸⁸
dear purchased merit of his glory.

Too base a ground is this, whereon to embroider the rich story of his eternal renown; some longer-lived tractate I reserve for the full blaze of his virtues, which here only in the sparks I decipher. Many embers of encumbrances have I at this time, which forbid the bright flame of my zeal to mount aloft as it would. Perforce I must break from it, since other turbulent cares sit as now at the stern of my invention. Thus I conclude with this chance-medley parenthesis, that whatsoever minutes' intermission I have of calmed content, or least respite to call my wits together, principal and immediate proceedeth from him.

Through him my tender wainscot study door is delivered from much assault and battery. Through him I look into and am looked on in the world, from whence otherwise I were a wretched banished exile. Through him all my good, as by a conduit head, is conveyed unto me; and to him all my endeavours, like rivers, shall pay tribute as to the ocean.

Did Ovid entitle Carus, a nobleman of Rome, the only constant friend he had, in his ungrateful extrusion among the Getes, and writ to him thus:

Qui quod es id vere Care vocaris
?
⁸⁹

and in another elegy:

O mihi post nullos Care memorande sodales
?
⁹⁰

Much more may I acknowledge all redundant prostrate vassalage to the royal descended family of the Careys, but for whom my spirit long ere this had expired, and my pen served as a poniard to gall my own heart

Why do I use so much circumstance, and in a stream on which none but gnats and flies do swim sound Fame‘s trumpet like Triton to call a number of foolish skiffs and light cock-boats
⁹¹
to parley?

Fear, if I be not deceived, was the last pertinent matter I had under my displing,
⁹²
from which I fear I have strayed beyond my limits; and yet fear hath no limits, for to hell and beyond hell it sinks down and penetrates.

But this was my position, that the fear of any expected evil is worse than the evil itself, which by divers comparisons I confirmed.

Now to visions and apparitions again, as fast as I can trudge.

The glasses of our sight, in the night, are like the prospective glasses one Hostius made in Rome, which represented the images of things far greater than they were. Each mote in the dark they make a monster, and every slight glimmering a giant.

A solitary man in his bed is like a poor bed-red lazar lying by the highway-side unto whose displayed wounds and sores a number of stinging flies do swarm for pastance
⁹³
and beverage. His naked wounds are his inward heart-griping woes, the wasps and flies his idle wandering thoughts; who to that secret smarting pain he hath already do add a further sting of impatience and new-lance his sleeping griefs and vexations.

Questionless, this is an unrefutable consequence, that the
man who is mocked of his fortune, he that hath consumed his brains to compass prosperity and meets with no counter-vailment
⁹⁴
in her likeness, but hedge wine and lean mutton and peradventure some half-eyed good looks that can hardly be discerned from winking; this poor piteous perplexed miscreant either finally despairs, or like a lank frostbitten plant loseth his vigour or spirit by little and little; any terror, the least illusion in the earth, is a Cacodaemon unto him. His soul hath left his body; for why, it is flying after these airy incorporate courtly promises, and glittering painted allurements, which when they vanish to nothing, it likewise vanisheth with them.

Excessive joy no less hath his defective and joyless operations, the spleen
⁹⁵
into water it melteth; so that except it be some momentary bubbles of mirth, nothing it yields but a cloying surfeit of repentance.

Divers instances have we of men whom too much sudden content and over-ravished delight hath brought untimely to their graves.

Four or five I have read of, whom the very extremity of laughter hath bereft of their lives; whereby I gather that even such another pernicious sweet, superfluous mirth is to the sense as a surfeit of honey to a man's stomach, than the which there is nothing more dangerous.

Be it as dangerous as it will, it cannot but be an easy kind of death It is like one that is stung with an aspis, who in the midst of his pain falls delighted asleep, and in that suavity of slumber surrenders the ghost; whereas he whom grief undertakes to bring to his end, hath his heart gnawen in sunder by little and little with vultures, like Prometheus.

But this is nothing, you will object, to our journey's end of apparitions. Yes, altogether; for of the overswelling superabundance of joy and grief we frame to ourselves most of our melancholy dreams and visions.

There is an old philosophical common proverb,
Unusquisque fingit fortunam sibi
: everyone shapes his own fortune
as he lists. More aptly may it be said: everyone shapes his own fears and fancies as he list.

In all points our brains are like the firmament, and exhale in every respect the like gross mistempered vapours and meteors: of the more foeculent
⁹⁶
combustible airy matter whereof, affrighting forms and monstrous images innumerable are created, but of the slimy unwieldier drossy part, dull melancholy or drowsiness.

And as the firmament is still moving and working, so uncessant is the wheeling and rolling on of our brains, which every hour are tempering some new piece of prodigy or other, and turmoiling, mixing and changing the course of our thoughts.

I write not this for that I think there are no true apparitions or prodigies, but to show how easily we may be flouted if we take not great heed with our own antique suppositions. I will tell you a strange tale tending to this nature; whether of true melancholy or true apparition, I will not take upon me to determine.

It was my chance in February last to be in the country some threescore mile off from London, where a gentleman of good worship and credit falling sick, the very second day of his lying down he pretended to have miraculous waking visions, which before I enter to describe, thus much I will inform ye by the way, that at the reporting of them he was in perfect memory, nor had sickness yet so tyrannized over him to make his tongue grow idle. A wise, grave, sensible man he was ever reputed, and so approved himself in all his actions in his life-time. This which I deliver, with many preparative protestations, to a great man of this land he confidently avouched. Believe it or condemn it as you shall see cause, for I leave it to be censured indifferently.

The first day of his distemperature, he visibly saw, as he affirmed, all his chamber hung with silken nets and silver hooks, the devil, as it should seem, coming thither a-fishing. Whereupon, every
Pater-Noster-while
,
⁹⁷
he looked whether
in the nets he should be entangled, or with the hooks ensnared. With the nets he feared to be strangled or smothered, and with the hooks to have his throat scratched out and his flesh rent and mangled. At length, he knew not how, they suddenly vanished and the whole chamber was cleared. Next a company of lusty sailors, every one a shirker
⁹⁸
or a swaggerer at the least, having made a brave voyage, came carousing and quaffing in large silver cans to his health. Fellows they were that had good big pop mouths
⁹⁹
to cry ‘port, ahelm, Saint George', and knew as well as the best what belongs to haling of bolings
¹⁰⁰
yare
¹⁰¹
and falling on the starboard buttock.

But to the issue of my tale. Their drunken proffers he utterly put by, and said he highly scorned and detested both them and their hellish disguisings; which notwithstanding, they tossed their cups to the skies, and reeled and staggered up and down the room like a ship shaking in the wind.

After all they danced lusty gallant
¹⁰²
and a drunken Danish lavalto
¹⁰³
or two, and so departed. For the third course, rushed in a number of stately devils, bringing in boisterous
¹⁰⁴
chests of massy treasure betwixt them. As brave they were as Turkish janissaries,
¹⁰⁵
having their apparel all powdered with gold and pearl, and their arms as it were bemailed with rich chains and bracelets, but faces far blacker than any ball of tobacco, great glaring eyes that had whole shelves of Kentish oysters in them, and terrible wide mouths, whereof not one of them but would well have made a case for Molenax'
¹⁰⁶
great globe of the world.