The

The
Mirror of Minds
or
John Barclay's
Icon Animorum Englished,
By Thomas May, Esquire London, Print. by I. B. for Thomas Walkley, 1633. The Epistle and Dedicary To the Right Honourable,
Richard, Lord Weston,
Lord high Treasurer of England, Knight of the most Noble Order, & c. My Lord,
I might be fearful that so great a master of the learned languages (as your
Lordship is known to be), having before read this acute discourse in the
original and enjoyed the author in his own strength and elegance, might not
only severely censure my weak translation, but justly neglect the
presentation of it, as a thing needless and improper to your learned self.
But may it please your Lordship to admit my reasons?
First, the greater your abilities are, the more authority will your name
give the work to those that are mere English readers and to whom my pains
most properly do belong. Barclay, the learned author, having with a sharp
and penetrating sight surveyed the difference of human dispositions, and
loth to bound his fame within the narrow limits of his own language,
clothed his work (and that most elegantly) in the Roman tongue. I, lest our
English Gentlemen (as many of them as cannot master the original) should
lose the sense of such a work, have made adventure to benefit them, and
with the loss (perchance) of mine own fame, to extend the fame of Barclay.
The second reason and the chief why I present it to your Lordship is drawn
from that analogy which I conceive between the matter of this book and your
mind, being such as it may be thought, if the author himself had lived in
this state, he would have chosen the same patron; your mind, my Lord, being
not only moulded for the Muses to love but made for public and high
employments, has not only occasion to meet the differences of human
dispositions, but ability of judgment to discern them; and with a conscious
delight may run over the mention of those things here, which yourself have
by experience already found, and meet in some parts of this discourse, your
own perfections truly charactered.
To you, my Lord, to whose noble bosom the Muses heretofore have resorted
for delight, they now fly for patronage and shelter: To your hands I humbly
present this weak endeavour, beseeching almighty God to bless you with
continuance and increase of temporal honors; and after, with eternal
happiness: so prayeth Your Lordship's most humbly devoted, Thomas May
The
Mirror of Minds
or
Barclay's
Icon Animorum The First Chapter
The four ages of man: Childhood, Youth, Middle-age, Old age
The making or marring of mankind, as of other creatures, is especially in
their first age. In trees, the sprigs, whilst they are tender, will yield
with ease to the grafter's hand and grow by his direction, either straight
or crooked. So the minds of infants by their parents' skill, no less than
their bodies by the midwife's hand, may with ease be moulded into such a
fashion as will be durable in after-ages. The seeds especially and
fundamental parts of virtue are by an early and strong persuasion to be so
engrafted into them, that they need not know whether nature or precept were
the teachers of them. To be dutiful to their parents and obedient to their
counsels; to abhor intemperance, lying, and deceit as prodigies and things
unusual; to adore especially the power of God, and sometimes by mercy,
sometimes by judgment, to consider of it - these things must be taught them
without trouble or severity; for whatever we follow for fear of punishment,
from the same things with a sad loathing we use to be averse, and the
hatred conceived in our youth, I know not by what custom of horror, we
often nourish in our old age. They must daily be seasoned with instruction
concerning the excellency and rewards of virtue; and vices in shameful and
disdainful manner must be named to them, to make them altogether ignorant
that such vices are so often in public practiced and without infamy.
Being thus brought up in such gentle rudiments, they will hate vices and
learn not to fear virtue as too rigid and harsh a mistress. They will
easily be brought to these beginnings of right discipline by the guidance
of their parents and teachers, whose opinion, like divine oracles, will
altogether sway their minds yet weak and not troubled with the ambition of
judging. Besides this, they cannot be allured by the flattering promises of
any vice, whose age as yet is not only inexperienced of pleasure, but
utterly incapable of it. They will therefore easily condemn that thing,
which in the judgment of their friends is dishonest and commended to
themselves by no temptation. Nor would we here initiate their childhood in
any such torment, [such] as superstitious and anxious piety, in but manly
and wary virtue; for since the minds of men, by an inbred weight, bend
heavily downward to the worst things, we had need to bow them, while yet
they are tender, quite contrary; that by this means when their natural
force shall bring them back, they may yet retain a happy mean betwixt their
nature and education.
But in this discipline of tender youth, as soon as their minds are sensible
of praise, the desire of it is to be kindled in them, that they may then
learn and accustom themselves to affect honour, and in all exercises,
either in schools or abroad at play, they may labour with delight to excel
their equals. Beside, when their age increasing shall bring them by degrees
(as it were) out of bondage, so that both the awe of their parents may not
too sensibly decrease in them, and they not wanton it through a sudden and
unexpected increase of liberty, [then] we must leave their childhood to
those delights which are proper to that age, lest we should seem to accuse
nature, which hath ordained that age to be weak and feeble, and
unseasonable sowing of wisdom in them corrupt their natures, not yet ripe
for such instructions. Let harmless wantonness be freely allowed them; let
them gently be taught learning, rather as a change of recreation than a
loathsome burthen; and rather fear than feel the correction of their
parents. Let them lastly enjoy that freedom which nature in pity hath
bestowed on them; nor be forced to endure the punishment of human cares
before they have deserved them; unless we think it may be accounted among
the least of mischiefs, when children altogether restrained from playing
are (like the wife of that Stolo[1]) terrified at all noise of rods; and
revolve wisdom in the shape of an hobgoblin, whose sour and sharp documents
they are not yet capable of.
That sense of misery which is most cruelly exquisite is most incident to
that age, whilst their tender minds do want ability to govern their fear,
and [they] judge of miseries, which yet they know not, worse than they are.
And as men whom fortune hath broken with great calamities, howsoever large
their capacities are, [they] will fill them all with the sense and
contemplation of their own miseries; even so in children, when that happens
which they fear the worst, all their ability of fearing and grieving is
spent upon it. A man, who by chance had escaped the hands of thieves who
threatened to hang him, being asked with what mind he expected death: "With
the same," quoth he, "that, when I was a boy, I expected whipping."
Moreover, the bitterness of perpetual fear in children's minds consumeth
that moisture which nature intendeth to make abundant for the spreading of
their limbs and growth of their bodies. For the stomach (we see) doth then
want his natural vigour, when the heat and spirits are called from thence
to aid the distressed brain; nor is the blood strongly diffused upon
promise of joy, being too much consumed with the interruptions of sadness.
Therefore such dispositions in the bondage of severe custody, the abilities
of their minds either frighted or wasted will stand at so unhappy a stay,
that those who were wise above their childhood do afterwards want the
ordinary wisdom required at man's estate.[2] To colts and young cattle we
freely allow an uncurbed wantonness, lest their first strength, which is
then growing, should be hindered by a fearful apprehension of future
bondage. And are we so blinded in mind, that what we behold in other
creatures, we either neglect or will not understand in our own children?
Neither yet is this age of infancy to be let loose to an infinite liberty.
Let them with moderation be kept in awe, taught to reverence their parents
highly, and be ever ignorant how much liberty is permitted to them. For if
the nature of a child be too malapert and full of fierceness, these
precepts of lenity belong not to him; that swelling which the vice of
nature has engendered in him and which often the parents too much
gentleness hath ripened and brought to a perfect ulcer, may be easily
lanced and taken away, whilst yet it is green and of easy growth. After
this manner, their delighted childhood shall be freely left both to their
own, and their parents' pleasure, and after they have fulfilled the folly
of their harmless concupiscence, age itself will by little and little
change their desires; and the roots of virtue will spring up in them, which
they will love, not so much by heat of nature, as judgment. Then they will
bring to their first youth and twilight of wisdom, a mind free, altogether
quiet, which by the virtue of their education, will easily embrace the
beauty of that light.
But as every mean is directly opposed to two extreme vices more contrary to
each other than to the middle virtue; so those that would call the raw
minds of children to too hasty a ripeness of studies may well be accused as
ignorant of the strength which nature hath bestowed upon that age. For
besides, that some children have rath-ripe[3] wits, as Papyrius's childhood
was judged worthy of the Roman senate. There is also a natural dowry and
wealth bestowed upon those years, a strength of capacious and easy memory,