Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney

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СКАЧАТЬ no man whose excellent wit more simply embraces integrity. No one can question his unfeigned love for his master except to wonder whether he loves Basilius better as a man or as a prince. He has a rare temperament, unlike most men, who either servilely yield to all appetites or, fancying good in obstinate austerity, neglect the prince’s person. This, then, is the man who, above all (and most worthy) the prince chiefly loves. Philanax was lying sick, and the prince must have written to him upon his return from Delphos, disclosing his growing determination to act upon some oracle that he had received there. Whereupon Philanax replied:

      Philanax’ Letter to Basilius

      Most respected and beloved prince! If at your going to Delphos you had been as pleased to use my humble service as you are now, I should have spoken in better season and to better purpose. If my speech had prevailed, you would now be far less in danger, and much more in quietness. I would then have said that wisdom and virtue being the only destinies appointed to man to follow, we should in them seek all our knowledge since such guides cannot fail us. Besides inward comfort, knowledge and virtue also lead directly to prosperity. Even at a time when wickedness prevails in the world, evil never happens to one who is in the company of virtue.

      I would also have said that the heavenly powers are to be reverenced rather than used. Instead of searching out hidden counsels to determine our future, we should seek mercies through prayer; the heavenly powers have left us better guides in ourselves. Prophecies are but fancies, either vain or infallible, not to be respected or else not to be prevented. But since it is weakness to recall what should have been done, and since your command embraces what will be done, I do (most dear lord) with humble boldness say that your going pleases me no better than the cause of your going.

      These thirty years you have governed this region in such a way that neither your subjects have lacked justice in you nor you obedience in them, and your neighbors have found you so hurtlessly strong that they thought it better to rest in your friendship than make new trial of your enmity. If order thus arises from the good constitution of your state, and from your wise providence, which has prevented all those things that might encumber your happiness, why should you now seek new courses? Your own example should comfort you to continue as you were; to me it is most certain that no destiny nor influence whatsoever (though it has not pleased you to tell me the oracle’s exact words) can bring man’s wit to a higher point than can wisdom and goodness.

      Why should you deprive yourself of government for fear of losing your government, like one that kills himself for fear of death? Nay, rather, if this oracle is worthy of account, arm your courage the more against it, for who will stick to him that abandons himself? Let your subjects have you in their eyes, let them see the benefits of your justice every day; they prefer present sureties to uncertain changes. Lastly, whether your time call you to live or die, do it like a prince.

      Now for your second resolution, which is to suffer no worthy prince to be a suitor to either of your daughters, but while you live, to keep them both unmarried and to kill the joy of posterity, as it were, which in your time you may still enjoy, moved perchance by a misunderstood oracle. If the affection of the father to his own children cannot plead sufficiently against such fancies, what shall I say? Certain it is that the God who is God of nature never teaches unnaturalness. And I hold the same mind touching your banishing your daughters from company, lest strange loves—I know not what—should follow. Certainly, sir, nature promises nothing in my ladies (your daughters) but goodness. Their education by your fatherly care has been till now most fit to restrain all evil, giving them virtuous delights for their minds and not making them grieve for lack of well-ruled liberty. Now you suddenly constrain them, and what can that do but argue suspicion?—no more unpleasant than unsure for the preserving of virtue.

      That is the surest way to untame a woman’s mind. How can a cage please a bird; how cannot a dog but grow fiercer with tying? Rage stirs the mind to think, and to think about that from which she is restrained. If you hide something, it becomes a treasure or a thing of great delight, and catches people’s fancies. And thoughts, once awakened, are surely harder to keep from accomplishment than before to have kept the mind—as yet undefiled—from thinking.

      Lastly, consigning so principal a charge as the princess Pamela (whose mind goes beyond the governing of many thousands such) to such a person as Dametas, besides being strange, comes from a very evil ground, that ignorance should be the mother of faithfulness. O no! He cannot be good that knows not why he is good, but is good only insofar as fortune may keep him unassayed. For coming once to trial, his rude simplicity is either easily turned or easily deceived. Thus what had seemed the first foundation of his faith becomes the last excuse of his fault.

      Thus far has your commandment and my zeal drawn me that I—like a man in a valley who may discern hills ahead, or like a poor ferryman who may spy a rock—humbly submit to your gracious consideration, beseeching you again to stand wholly upon your own virtue, as the surest way to maintain you in what you are and to avoid any evil which may be imagined.

      “By the contents of this letter,” Kalander said, “you may perceive that the cause of all was vanity, which possesses many who, seeing our poor waystation of life as a perpetual mansion, crave the certainty of knowing things to come, wherein nothing is so certain as our continual uncertainty.

      “In particular points what the oracle was, in faith I know not, and neither did Philanax, as you may see by one place in his letter. But it is clear that Basilius’ judgment, corrupted by his princely habits, heard rather than followed the wise (as I take it) counsel of Philanax. Basilius left the helm of his government, much to the amazement of the people, who believe many strange rumors. There is fear of danger from, or to, Basilius’ nephew, the valiant Amphialus. And in those who are ambitious among the nobility, there is much envy of Philanax to see him so advanced, though (to speak simply) he deserves more than many of us in Arcadia.

      “The prince has hidden himself away, as I told you, and he has plainly confessed that while he breathes, his daughters shall not have husbands but keep solitary with him, where no one has leave to visit him at any time except for a certain priest, excellent in poetry, whom Basilius makes write out such things as he likes best, the priest being no less delightful in conversation than needful for devotion. Basilius also enjoys the company of about twenty shepherds, some for his exercise, some for eclogues.

      “And now you know as much as myself. If I have held you over long, lay the fault upon my old age, which in its very disposition is talkative. It may be,” he said smiling, “that nature loves to exercise most that part which is least decayed, and that is our tongue, or it may be that we cannot except by utterance make known our knowledge, the only thing whereof we poor old men can brag. Or it may be that men seek to eternize themselves by all means, so much the more as they near their end, and that they do so not only by their children but by speeches and writings recommended to the memory of hearers and readers. But this much I will say for myself: that I have not laid these matters either so openly or largely to any as to yourself—so much, if much I fail not, do I see in you that makes me both love and trust you.”

      “Never may he be old,” answered Palladius, “who does not reverence that age whose heaviness, in weighing down the frail and fleshly balance, as much raises the noble and spiritual. You might have proffered another reason as well, that it’s wisdom that inclines the old to bestow their good advice—and that I have received from you, never to be forgotten without ungratefulness.

      “Now, of the many strange conceits you told me that have possessed your prince, the last would not seem the least strange to me—that he should conceive such pleasure in shepherds’ discourse—except that, as you told me, this country is notable for such wits. Indeed, myself having been brought not only to this place but to my life by Strephon and Claius, I found in their conference wits as might become the shepherds Homer speaks of—shepherds who govern peoples, senators who hold counsel in their sheepcote.”

      “Those two,” СКАЧАТЬ