ding, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration,
things not before discoursed or written of, argues first a singular
good will, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight, and
safe government, lords and commons; and from thence derives itself to a
gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of their enemies, as if
there were no small number of as great spirits among us, as his was who
when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that
piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his
own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy
success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the
spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational
faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit
and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and condition the body is;
so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it
has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to
spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of
controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor
drooping to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of
corruption to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the
glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great
and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble
and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at {29} the full midday
beam; purging and unsealing her long abused sight at the fountain
itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and
flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about,
amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would
prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

What would ye do then, should ye suppress all this flowery crop of
knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city?
Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a
famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is
measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, lords and commons! they
who counsel ye to such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye suppress
yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the
immediate