though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition, in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect: Well, then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c. And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it-- Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, Nor at the Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; Content thyself with the small barren praise Which thy neglected verse does raise, &c. However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it a _corpus perditum_, without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at man, who says to his soul, Take thy ease: I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness--a new misfortune to me--as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course; _Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum_.[3] Nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. [Footnote 3: I have not falsely sworn.] _Nec vos dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos musae, libertas, otia, libri, Hortique, sylvaeque, anima remanente relinquam_. Nor by me e'er shall you, You of all names the sweetest and the best, You muses, books, and liberty, and rest; You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be, As long as life itself forsakes not me. _Cowley._ THE GRAND ELIXIR