human
O, good old man, how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed! Thou art not of the fashion of these times, When none will sweat but for promotion.
gpt
As to common menial servants, they have great wages, are well kept and cloathed, but are notwithstanding the plague of almost every house in town. They form themselves into societies or rather confederacies, contributing to the maintenance of each other when out of place, and if any of them cannot manage the family where they are entertained, as they please, immediately they give notice they will be gone. There is no speaking to them, they are above correction, and if a master should attempt it, he may expect to be handsomely drubbed by the creature he feeds and harbors, or perhaps an action brought against him for it. It is become a common saying, _If my servant ben't a thief, if he be but honest, I can bear with other things._ And indeed it is very rare in London to meet with an honest servant. [142] Southey writes to his daughter Edith, in 1824,
human
All the maids eloped because I had turned a man out of the kitchen at eleven o'clock on the preceding night. Nay, Hugh Rhodes, in his _Boke of Nurture_(1577), speaks of servants
gpt
This Dr, for a Dr he is, brags that if he have but the hint or notice of any useful thing not yet invented, he will undertake to find it out, except some few which he hath vowed not to meddle with as _vitrum maliabile, perpet. motus, via proxima ad Indos & lapis philosi_: all, or anything else he will undertake, but for his private gain, to make a monopoly thereof & to sell the use or knowledge thereof at too high rates. This breed of pedlers in science is not yet extinct. The exceptions made by the Doctor show a becoming modesty. Again:
human
I have been 2 or 3 times with the Dr & can get but small satisfaction about your queries.... Yet I must confess he seemed very free to me, only in the main he was mystical. This he said, that when the will of God is you shall know what you desire, it will come with such a light that it will make a harmony among all your authors, causing them sweetly to agree, & put you forever out of doubt & question. In another letter:
gpt
I cannot discover into _terram incognitam_, but I have had a ken of it showed unto me. The way to it is, for the most part, horrible & fearful, the dangers none worse, to them that are _destinati filii_: sometimes I am travelling that way.... I think I have spoken with some that have been there.
human
Dear friend, I desire with all my heart that I might write plainer to you, but in discovering the mystery, I may diminish its majesty & give occasion to the profane to abuse it, if it should fall into unworthy hands. By and by he begins to think his first doctor a humbug, but he finds a better. Howes was evidently a man of imaginative temper, fit to be captivated by the alchemistic theory of the unity of composition in nature, which was so attractive to Goethe. Perhaps the great poet was himself led to it by his Rosicrucian studies when writing the first part of Faust. Howes tells his friend that
gpt
--a truth of very wide application, and too often lost sight of or never seen at all.
human
The Arabian Philos. I writ to you of, he was styled among us Dr Lyon, the best of all the Rosicrucians[143] that ever I met withal, far beyond Dr Ewer: they that are of his strain are knowing men; they pretend [i.e. claim] to live in free light, they honor God & do good to the people among whom they live, & I conceive you are in the right that they had their learning from Arabia.
gpt
But to our sympathetical business whereby we may communicate our minds one to another though the diameter of the earth interpose. _Diana non est centrum omnium_. I would have you so good a geometrician as to know your own centre. Did you ever yet measure your everlasting self, the length of your life, the breadth of your love, the depth of your wisdom & the height of your light? Let Truth be your centre, & you may do it, otherways not. I could wish you would now begin to leave off being altogether an outward man; this is but _casa Regentis_; the Ruler can draw you straight lines from your centre to the confines of an infinite circumference, by which you may pass from any part of the circumference to another without obstacle of earth or secation of lines, if you observe & keep but one & the true & only centre, to pass by it, from it, & to it. Methinks I now see you _intus et extra_ & talk to you, but you mind me not because you are from home, you are not within, you look as if you were careless of yourself; your hand & your voice differ; 'tis my friend's hand, I know it well; but the voice is your enemy's. O, my friend, if you love me, get you home, get you in! You have a friend as well as an enemy. Know them by their voices. The one is still driving or enticing you out; the other would have you stay within. Be within and keep within, & all that are within & keep within shall you see know & communicate with to the full, & shall not need to strain your outward senses to see & hear that which is like themselves uncertain & too-too often false, but, abiding forever within, in the centre of Truth, from thence you may behold & understand the innumerable divers emanations within the circumference, & still within; for without are falsities, lies, untruths, dogs &c. Howes was tolerant also, not from want of faith, but from depth of it.
human
The relation of your fight with the Indians I have read in print, but of the fight among yourselves, _bellum linguarum_ the strife of tongues, I have heard much, but little to the purpose. I wonder your people, that pretend to know so much, doe not know that love is the fulfilling of the law, & that against love there is no law. Howes forgot that what might cause only a ripple in London might overwhelm the tiny Colony in Boston. Two years later, he writes more philosophically, and perhaps with a gentle irony, concerning
gpt
He hints that the people of the Bay might perhaps as well take these signs to themselves as lay them at the door of Mrs. Hutchinson and what not.
human
Where is there such another people then [as] in New England, that labors might & main to have Christ formed in them, yet would give or appoint him his shape & clothe him too? It cannot be denied that we have conceived many monstrous imaginations of Christ Jesus: the one imagination says, _Lo, here he is_; the other says, _Lo, there he is_; multiplicity of conceptions, but is there any one true shape of Him? And if one of many produce a shape, it is not the shape of the Son of God, but an ugly horrid metamorphosis. Neither is it a living shape, but a dead one, yet a crow thinks her own bird the fairest, & most prefer their own wisdom before God's, Antichrist before Christ. Howes had certainly arrived at that