but
none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present
fortune: and a wise man is placed in a variety of chances, like the
nave or centre of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions and
changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns
gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which
part is up, and which is down; for there is some virtue or other to be
exercised whatever happens--either patience or thanksgiving, love or
fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness.

Or, take this from Samuel Johnson:--

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind; and he who has
so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing
anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless
efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.

Now, to be frank, I do not call that first passage very good prose. Like
much of Jeremy Taylor's writing it is prose tricked out with the
trappings and odds-and-ends of verse. It starts off, for example, with a
brace of heroics--'Since all the evil in the world consists'...'between
the object and the appetite.' You may say, further, that the simile of
the wheel, though proper enough to prose, is poetical too: that Homer
might have used it ('As in a wheel the rim turns violently, while the
nave, though it turns also, yet seems to be at rest'--something of that
sort). Nevertheless you will agree with me that, in exchanging
Wordsworth for Taylor and Johnson, we have relaxed something with the
metre, something that the metre kept taut; and this something we
discover to be the emotional pitch.

But let me give you another illustration, supplied (I dare say quite
unconsciously) by one who combined a genuine love of verse--in which,
however, he was no adept--with a sure instinct for beautiful prose.
Contentment was a favourite theme with Isaak Walton: "The Compleat
Angler" is packed with praise of it: and in "The Compleat Angler" occurs
this well-known passage:--

But, master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were
absent from me, I sat down under a willow tree by the waterside, and
considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in
which you then had left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a
heart to think so; that he had at this time many law-suits depending,
and that they both damped his mirth and took