Page:Gondibert, an heroick poem - William Davenant (1651).djvu/24

 In the choice of these Objects (which are as Sea-marks to direct the dangerous voyage of life) I thought fit to follow the rule of Coasting Maps, where the Shelves and Rocks are describ'd as well as the safe Channel; the care being equal how to avoid as to proceed: and the Characters of men (whose passions are to be eschew'd) I have deriv'd from the distempers of Love or Ambition: for Love and Ambition are too often the raging Feavers of great minds. Yet Ambition (if the vulgar acception of the word were corrected) would signifie no more than an extraordinary lifting of the feet in the rough ways of Honour, over the impediments of Fortune; and hath a warmth (till it be chaf'd into a Fever) which is necessary for every virtuous breast: for good men are guiltie of too little appetite to greatness, and it either proceeds from that they call contentedness (but contentedness, when examin'd, doth mean something of Lasiness as well as Moderation) or from some melancholy precept of the Cloyster; where they would make life (for which the world was onely made) more unpleasant than Death: as if Nature, the Vicegerent of God (who in providing delightfull varieties, which virtuous greatness can best possess, or assure peaceably to others, implicitly commanded the use of them) should in the necessaries of life (life being her chief business) though in her whole reign she never committed one error, need the counsel of Fryars, whose solitude makes them no more fit for such direction, than Prisoners long fetter'd are for a race.

In saying this, I onely awaken such retir'd men, as evaporate their strength of mind by close and long thinking; and would every where separate the Soul from the Bodie, ere we are dead, by perswading us (though they were both created and have been long companions together) that the preferment of the one must meerly consist in deserting the other; teaching us to court the Grave, as if during the whole lease of life, we were like Moles to live under ground; or as if long and well dying, were the