Table Talk英語美文
John Selden (1584—1654)
John Selden was born in Sussex, England; became a lawyer and jurist of wide reputation; published a number of works in 1618 which were suppressed; was imprisoned in the Tower in 1621 for sedition and in 1628 assisted in drawing up the Petition of Right against the encroachments of royalty; was elected in 1640 to the Long Parliament and was a member of the committee that impeached Archbishop Laud. The extracts here printed from Selden’s Table-Talk, a missellany of learned epigrammatic comments on all types of subject, illustrate the basic “observations” upon which essays are built. Selden did not intend them for publication. In fact the book, which saw the light first in1689, is the joint work of Selden and the compiler, Richar Milward. It was not published till long after his death. There are 154 comments, of which those given are Nos.13, 38, 86, 151,and 152 (in S. H. Reynold’s ed/ Oxford, 1892).
Changing Sides
‘Tis the trial of a man to see if he will change his side; and if he be so weak as to change once, he will change again. Your country fellows have a way to try if a man be weak in the hams, by coming behind him and giving him a blow unawares; if he bend once, he will bend again.
The lords that fall from the king after they have got estates by base flattery at court and now pretend conscience, do as a vintner, that when he first sets up, you may go to his house, and carouse there; but when he grows rich, he turns conscientious, and will sell no wine upon the Sabbath Day.
Col. Goring,[1] serving first the one side and then the other, did like a good miller that knows how to grind which way soever the wind sits.
After Luther[2] had made a combustion in Germany about religion, he was sent to by the Pope, to be taken off, and offered any preferment in the Church that he would make choice of: Luther answered, if he had offered half as much at first, he would have accepted it; but now he had gone so far, he could not come back. In truth, he had made himself a greater thing than they could make him; the German princes courted him, he was become the author of a sect ever after to be called Lutherans. So have our preachers done that are against the bishops; they have made themselves greater with the people than they can be made the other way; and, therefore, there is the less probability of bringing them off.
Evil Speaking
He that speaks ill of another, commonly before he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks against: for if he had civility or breeding, he would forbear such kind of language.
A gallant man is above ill words; an example we have in the old Lord of Salisbury, who was a great wise man. Stone had called some lord about court, “Fool”: the lord complains and has Stone whipped; Stone cries, “I might have called my Lord of Salisbury ‘fool’ often enough before he would have had me whipped.”
Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather give him good words, that he may use you the better if you chance to fall into his hands. The Spaniard did this when he was dying. His confessor told him (to work him to repentance) how the devil tormented the wicked that went to hell: the Spaniard, replying, called the devil “my lord”: “I hope my lord the devil is not so cruel.” His confessor reproved him. “Excuse me,” said the Don, “for calling him so; I know not into what hands I may fall, and if I happen into his I hope he will use me the better for giving him good words.”
The Measure of Things
We measure from ourselves; and as things are for our use and purpose, so we approve them. Bring a pear to the table that is rotten, we cry it down, “ ’T is naught”; but bring a medlar[3] that is rotten, and “ ’T is a fine thing”: and yet I’ll warrant you the pear thinks as well of itself as the medlar does.
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves. Nash,[4] a poet, poor enough (as poets used to be), seeing an alderman with his gold chain, upon his great horse, by way of scorn said to one of his companions, “ Do you see yon fellow, how goodly, how big he looks? Why, that fellow cannot make a blank verse!”
Nay, we measure the goodness of God from ourselves; we measure his goodness, his justice, his wisdom, by something we call just, good, or wise in ourselves; and in so doing we judge proportionably to the country fellow in the play, who said if he were a king he would live like a lord, and have peas and bacon every day, and a whip that cried, “Slash!”
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