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THE SECOND BOOKE 275
wheelings, the windings, and enterlacements of the
celestial bodies diapred in colours, according to Plato,
about the spindle of necessity.
Miindus domus est maxima remm,
Quam quinque altitoncc fi agmme zones
Cingunt) per quam hmbus pictus bis sex signis,
Stellimicantibus, alius, in obliquo athere, Lunoe
Bigas acceptat.
The world, of things the grpatest habitation,
Which five high-thundnng Zones by separation
Engird, through which a scarfe depamted faire
With twice six signes star-shimog in the aire*
Obliquely raisde, the waine
0' th Moone doth entertaine.
They are all dreames, and mad follies. Why will not
nature one day be pleased to open her hosome to us,
and make us perfectly see the meanes and conduct of her
motions, and enable our eyes to judge of them? Oh,
good God, what abuses, and what distractions should
we find in our poor understanding and weake knowledge
! I am deceived if she hold one thing directly
in its point, and I shall part hence more ignorant of all
other things than mine ignorance. Have I not seene
this divine saying in Plato, that Nature is nothing but
an aenigmaticall poesie ? As a man might say, an overshadowed
and darke picture, enter-shming with an
infinite varietie of false lights, to exercise our conjectures
: Latent ista omnia crassis occnltuta et circumjusa
tenebris: ut nulla acles humani ingenii tanta sit, qtw
penetrare incielum, terram tntrare posmt:¹ ' All these
things lye hid so veiled and environed with misty darknesse,
as no edge of man is so piersant as it can passe
into heaven or dive into the earth.' And truly
Philosophy is nothing else but a sophisticated poesie:
whence have these ancient authors all their authorities
but from poets ? And the first were poets themselves,
and in their art treated the same. Plato is but a loose
poet. All high and more than humane sciences are
decked and enrobed with a poeticall style. Even as
¹ CIC. Acad. Qu. 1. iv.