How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And silly truth his highest skill; Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untiéd to the world with care Of prince's grace or vulgar breath; Who hath his life from humours freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great; Who envieth none whom chance doth raise Or vice; who never understood How swords give slighter wounds than praise. Nor rules of state, but rules of good; Who God doth late and early pray More of his grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend. This man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands And having nothing, yet hath all. Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but in every case I find his reading the best. Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high position through the favour of James I.--gained, it is said, by the poem which the author called _Nosce Teipsum_,[71] but which is generally entitled _On the Immortality of the Soul_, intending by _immortality_ the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service. Sir John Davies's treatise is not only far more poetic in image and utterance than that of Lord Brooke, but is far more clear in argument and firm in expression as well. Here is a fine invocation: O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day! Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within; Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray, Which now to view itself doth first begin. * * * * *