LITERARY
MEMORIES OF THE PAST---II
1.
A
child is a man in a small letter, the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve
or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write
his character. He is nature’s fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and
much handling, dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper un-scribbled
with observations of the world, wherewith at length. It becomes a blurred
note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by
sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise,
nor endures evil to come, by forcing them. …The elder he grows, he is a stair
lower from God. -----JOHN EARLE in Microcosmography
. 1628.
2.
Motives
of Prayer. The prayers of men have saved cities and kingdoms from ruin ; Prayer
hath raised dead men to life, hath stopped the violence of fire, shut the mouths
of wild beasts, hath altered the course of nature, …made the sun to go from
west to east, and the moon to stand still, and rocks and mountains to walk; and
it cures diseases without physic, and makes physic to do the work of nature, and
nature to do the work of grace, and grace to do the work of God; and it does miracles of accident and
event; and yet prayer, that does all this, is, of itself, nothing but an ascent
of the mind to God, a desiring things fit to be desired, and an expression of
this desire to God as we can, and as becomes us. And our unwillingness to pray
is nothing else but a not desiring what we ought passionately to long for ; or,
if we do desire it, it is a choosing rather to miss our satisfaction and
felicity to ask for it. -----JEREMY TAYLOR in Holy Dying. 1651.
3.
ABRAHAM
COWLEY’S PRAYER TO GOD. This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for
envy, for contempt too high. Some honour I would have, not from great deeds,
but good alone; the unknown are better than ill known. Rumour can open the
grave; acquaintance I would have ; but when it depends not on the number, but
the choice of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light, and sleep,
as undisturbed as death, the night. My house a cottage, more than palace, and
should fitting be for all my use, no luxury, my garden painted over with Nature’s
hand, not Art’s; and pleasures yield .-----ABRAHAM COWLEY, OF MYSELF, in essay titled Several Discourses. 1668.
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G.R.Kanwal
31 July 2026
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