ot enter into
the philosophy of them, which ranks him among the mystics of whom I have
yet to speak, will understand a good deal of it symbolically: for how
could he be expected to keep his poetry and his philosophy distinct when
of themselves they were so ready to run into one; or in verse to define
carefully betwixt degree and kind, when kinds themselves may rise by
degrees? To distinguish without separating; to be able to see that what
in their effects upon us are quite different, may yet be a grand flight
of ascending steps, "to stop--no record hath told where," belongs to the
philosopher who is not born mutilated, but is a poet as well.

John Fletcher, likewise a dramatist, the author of the following poem,
was two years younger than Ben Jonson. It is, so far as I am aware, the
sole non-dramatic voice he has left behind him. Its opening is an
indignant apostrophe to certain men of pretended science, who in his time
were much consulted--the Astrologers.

UPON AN HONEST MAN'S FORTUNE.

You that can look through heaven, and tell the stars;
Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;
Find out new lights, and give them where you please--
To those men honours, pleasures, to those ease;
You that are God's surveyors, and can show
How far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;
Know all the charges of the dreadful thunder,
And when it will shoot over, or fall under;
Tell me--by all your art I conjure ye--
Yes, and by truth--what shall become of me.
Find out my star, if each one, as you say,
Have his peculiar angel, and his way;
Observe my fate; next fall into your dreams;
Sweep clean your houses, and new-line your schemes;[83]
Then say your worst. Or have I none at all?
Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?
Or am I poor? not able? no full flame?
My star, like me, unworthy of a name?
Is it your art can only work on those
That deal with dangers, dignities, and clothes,
With love, or new opinions? You all lie:
A fishwife hath a fate, and so have I--
But far above your finding. He that gives,
Out of his providence, to all that lives--
And no man knows his treasure, no, not you;--

* * * * *

He that made all the stars you daily read,
And from them filch a knowledge how to feed,
Hath hid this from you. Your conjectures all
Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall:
Man is his own star, and the soul that can