nd, not Art's; and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, that happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.

You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets, for the
conclusion is taken out of Horace; and perhaps it was the immature and
immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved, the
characters in me. They were like letters cut in the bark of a young
tree, which, with the tree, still grow proportionably. But how this
love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question: I believe
I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with
such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I
remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was
wont to lie in my mother's parlour--I know not by what accident, for
she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion--but there
was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was
infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and
monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there--though my
understanding had little to do with all this--and by degrees, with the
tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had
read him all over before I was twelve years old. With these affections
of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the
university; but was soon torn from thence by that public violent
storm, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up
every plant, even from the princely cedars, to me, the hyssop. Yet I
had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I
was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into
the court of one of the best princesses in the world. Now, though I
was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my
life; that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a
daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant--for that was
the state then of the English and the French courts--yet all this was
so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation
of reason to t