[Thunder and lightning. O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

Enter Devils

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!-Ah, Mephistophilis!
[Exeunt Devils with Faustus.

Enter Chorus

Chor. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward
wits

To practice more than heavenly power per-
mits.
[Exit.
Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus

SELECTIONS FROM TAMBURLAINE

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

1. The Will to Power

Meander (to the Persian Prince). Your majesty shall shortly have your wish, And ride in triumph through Persepolis. [Exeunt all except Tamburlaine and his three Captains.

Tamb. And ride in triumph through Persepolis!

Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles!—
Usumcasane and Theridamas,

Is it not passing brave to be a king,

And ride in triumph through Persepolis? Tech. O, my lord, it is sweet and full of pomp!

Usum. To be a king, is half to be a god.
Ther. A god is not so glorious as a king:
I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven,
Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth;-
To wear a crown enchas'd with pearl and
gold,

Whose virtues carry with it life and death;
To ask and have, command and be obey'd;
When looks breed love, with looks to gain
the prize,

Such power attractive shines in princes' eyes.

Tamb. Why, say, Theridamas, wilt thou be a king?

Ther. Nay, though I praise it, I can live without it.

Tamb. What say my other friends? will you be kings?

Tech. I, if I could, with all my heart, my lord.

Tamb. Why, that's well said, Techelles: so would I:

And so would you, my masters, would you not?

Usum. What, then, my lord?

Tamb. Why, then, Casane, shall we wish for aught

The world affords in greatest novelty,

And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute? Methinks we should not. I am strongly

mov'd,

That if I should desire the Persian crown,
I could attain it with a wondrous ease:
And would not all our soldiers soon consent,
If we should aim at such a dignity?
Ther. I know they would with our persua-
sions.

Tamb. Why, then, Theridamas, I'll first

assay

To get the Persian kingdom to myself; Then thou for Parthia; they for Scythia and Media;

And, if I prosper, all shall be as sure
As if the Turk, the Pope, Afric, and Greece,
Came creeping to us with their crowns
a-piece.

[From Act. II, Sc. v.]

2. Infinite Desire

Tamburlaine (to the Persian Prince, whom he has conquered). The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,

That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair,
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state.
What better precedent than mighty Jove?
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's

course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

[From Act II, Sc. vii.]

3. In Praise of Beauty

Ah, fair Zenocrate!-divine Zenocrate!
Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,-
That in thy passion for thy country's love,
And fear to see thy kingly father's harm,
With hair dishevel'd wip'st thy watery
cheeks;

And, like to Flora in her morning's pride,
Shaking her silver tresses in the air,
Rain'st on the earth resolved pearl in show-

ers,

And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face,

Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits,
And comments volumes with her ivory pen,
Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes;
Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven,
In silence of thy solemn evening's walk,
Making the mantle of the richest night,
The moon, the planets, and the meteors,
light;

There angels in their crystal armors fight
A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts
For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life,
His life that so consumes Zenocrate;
Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul
Than all my army to Damascus' walls;
And neither Persia's sovereign nor the Turk
Troubled my senses with conceit of foil
So much by much as doth Zenocrate.
What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?
If all the pens that ever poets held

Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,

And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts,

Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit;
If these had made one poem's period,
And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the
least,

Which into words no virtue can digest.
But how unseemly is it for my sex,
My discipline of arms and chivalry,
My nature, and the terror of my name,
To harbor thoughts effeminate and faint!
Save only that in beauty's just applause,
With whose instinct the soul of man is
touched;

And every warrior that is rapt with love
Of fame, of valor, and of victory,
Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits:

I thus conceiving, and subduing both, That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the gods,

Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' flames,

And mask in cottages of strowed reeds,
Shall give the world to note, for all my birth,
That virtue solely is the sum of glory,
And fashions men with true nobility.—

[From Act V, Sc. i.]

"ALL KNOWLEDGE TO BE MY PROVINCE" FRANCIS BACON

[A Letter to Lord Chancellor Burghley]

MY LORD-With as much confidence as mine own honest and faithful devotion unto your service and your honorable correspondence unto me and my poor estate can breed in a man, do I commend myself unto your Lordship. I wax now somewhat ancient; one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed; and I do not fear that action shall impair it, because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. I ever bare a mind (in some middle place that I could discharge) to serve her majesty, not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honor; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly); but as a man born under an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities. Besides, I do not find in myself so much self-love, but tha the greater parts of my thoughts are to deserve well (if I be able) of my friends, and namely of your Lordship; who, being the Atlas of this commonwealth, the honor of my house, and the second founder of my poor estate, I am tied by all duties, both of a good patriot and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever I am to do you service. Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me: for, though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get.

Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosi

ties, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favorably), philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is the thing I greatly affect. And for your Lordship, perhaps you shall not find more strength and less encounter in any other. And if your Lordship shall find now, or at any time, that I do seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent, say then that I am a most dishonest man. And if your Lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty, but this I will do-I will sell the inheritance I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which (he said) lay so deep. This which I have writ unto your Lordship is rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising, or reservation. Wherein I have done honor both to your Lordship's wisdom, in judging that that will be best believed of your Lordship which is truest, and to your Lordship's good nature, in retaining nothing from you. And even so I wish your Lordship all happiness, and to myself means and occasions to be added to my faithful desire to do you service. From my lodgings at Gray's Inn.

A MORE DIVINE PERFECTION

RICHARD HOOKER

[From Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 1, ch. xi.] Now if men had not naturally this desire to be happy, how were it possible that all men should have it? All men have. Therefore this desire in man is natural. It is not in our power not to do the same; how should it then be in our power to do it coldly or remissly? So that our desire being natural is also in that degree of earnestness whereunto nothing can be added. And is it probable that God should frame the hearts

of all men so desirous of that which no man may obtain? It is an axiom of Nature that natural desire cannot utterly be frustrate. This desire of ours being natural should be frustrate, if that which may satisfy the same were a thing impossible for man to aspire unto. Man doth seek a triple perfection: first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth either as necessary supplements, or as beauties and ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly a spiritual and divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them. They who make the first of these three the scope of their whole life, are said by the Apostle to have no god but only their belly, to be earthly-minded men. Unto the second they bend themselves, who seek especially to excel in all such knowledge and virtue as doth most commend men. To this branch belongeth the law of moral and civil perfection. That there is somewhat higher than either of these two, no other proof doth need than the very process of man's desire, which being natural should be frustrate, if there were not some farther thing wherein it might rest at the length contented, which in the former it cannot do. For man doth not seem to rest satisfied, either with fruition of that wherewith his life is preserved, or with performance of such actions as advance him most deservedly in estimation; but doth further covet, yea oftentimes manifestly pursue with great sedulity and earnestness, that which cannot stand him in any stead for vital use; that which exceedeth the reach of sense; yea somewhat above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with hidden exultation it rather surmiseth than conceiveth; somewhat it seeketh, and what that is directly it knoweth not, yet very intentive desire thereof doth so incite it, that all other known delights and pleasures are laid aside, they give place to the search of this but only suspected desire. If the soul of man did serve only to give him being in this life, then things appertaining unto this life would content him, as we see they do other creatures; which creatures enjoying what they live by seek no further, but in this contentation do show a kind of acknowledgment that there is no higher good which doth any way belong unto them. With us it is otherwise.