"O Cromwell, Cromwell! Had I but served my God with half the zeal Henry VIII., III. 2. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [An English poet; born at Cockermouth, April 7, 1770; educated at Cambridge; began his literary career, 1793; settled at Grasmere, 1799; wrote "The Prelude," 1805; moved to Rydal Mount, 1813; published "The Excursion," 1814; appointed distributor of stamps, 1813; succeeded Southey as poet-laureate, 1843; died April 23, 1845.] Poetry is only the eloquence and enthusiasm of religion. "The true poet," he said, "ascends to receive knowledge; he descends to impart it." He remarked of "The Elegy in a Country Churchyard," "It is almost the only instance where Gray deviated into nature." .I would not give up the mists that spiritualize our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy. "He who has Nature for his companion," declared Wordsworth, "must in some sense be ennobled by the intercourse." Truth takes no account of centuries. How men undervalue the power of simplicity, but it is the real key to the heart. SIR HENRY WOTTON. [An English diplomatist and writer; born in Kent, 1568; educated at Oxford; resided several years abroad; secretary to the Earl of Essex, whom he accompanied to Spain and Ireland; fled to the Continent on the fall of Essex; gained the favor of James I., who sent him as ambassador to Venice, and other powers; provost of Eton, 1625; died 1639.] An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. Written in Latin in the album of his friend Fleckamore, as he was passing through Augsburg on his way to Venice (Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum rei publicæ causâ). Wotton's biographer thinks that he intended a pun in the use of the word "lie," the other sense being, to live out of his country "for his country's good;" which was, however, lost by the employment of Latin. - WALTON: Life. When Wotton's advice was asked by a person setting out on a foreign mission, he said, "Ever speak the truth; for, if you will do so, you shall never be believed, and 'twill put your adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their dispositions and undertakings." It was a saying of Cavour's, "I have found out the art of deceiving diplomatists: I speak the truth, and I am certain they will not believe me." To a priest, who wrote on a slip of paper during vespers in a church in Rome, "Where was your religion to be found before Luther?" he replied, in the same manner, "My religion was to be found where yours is not to be found, in the written word of God."-Ibid. Wilkes's answer to a similar question was briefer: "Where were your hands before you washed them?" Wotton caused to be inscribed on his tomb in Eton College: "Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus author, Disputandi pruritus ecclesiarum scabies" (The itch of disputation will prove the scab of the Church). - I bid. Milton travelled on the Continent under Wotton's directions, "with the celebrated precept of prudence, I pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto (Thoughts close and looks loose)."—JOHNSON: Life of Milton. XERXES THE GREAT. [King of Persia; succeeded Darius, 485 B.C.; raised an immense army for the invasion of Greece, 480; captured Athens, after turning the Pass of Thermopylæ, but defeated at Salamis, and returned to Asia; murdered, 465.] I shall not buy my Attic figs in future, but grow them. When planning the invasion of Greece, he refused to eat the figs offered for sale. - PLUTARCH: Apothegms. He gave as a reason for the tears which he was seen to shed as his army was crossing the Hellespont into Greece, that in a hundred years not one of all that vast assembly would be alive. Admiring the bravery of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, his ally at the battle of Salamis, he exclaimed, “My men have proved themselves women, and my women men." ZEUXIS. [A celebrated Greek painter, born at Heraclea about 450 B.C.; studied and worked at Athens and in Southern Italy; and was renowned for his skill in the imitation of the human form, and for his grand and energetic style.] If I boast, it shall be of the slowness with which I finish my pictures. To Agatharcus, the painter, who boasted of the ease and celerity with which he despatched his paintings. To the same source may be attributed the remark, when told of the rapid execution and greater production of certain other artists: "I work for immortality." Having painted so naturally a dish of grapes held by a boy that the birds pecked at the fruit, he said, "Had I painted the boy as true to nature as the grapes, the birds would have been afraid to touch them." This may be connected with the cele-brated trial of skill between Zeuxis and his younger rival Parrhasius. The former painted grapes so naturally that the birds flew at the picture to eat them; confident of success, he called upon his rival to draw aside the curtain and show his picture: the curtain itself was the picture, painted upon a board to resemble real drapery. Zeuxis yielded the palm, saying, "I deceive birds; you, an artist." |