Advice to a Son

The Precepts of Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Francis Osborne

Louis B. Wright

• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789124354
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

"Guides to conduct are common to all ages, for writers never cease to believe that the distillation of their wisdom will in some fashion improve the behavior of youth and provide useful instruction to their elders. The sixteenth century was a particularly didactic age and had more than its share of self-appointed instructors with faith in their missions." So writes Louis B. Wright in his Introduction to Advice to a Son.This volume makes available three of the most famous sets of precepts. The manuals attributed to Lord Burghley and Sir Walter Raleigh and a treatise compiled by Francis Osborne are indicative of both the aspirations and the morals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they provide an index to the social attitudes of the age.Immensely popular and influential, they were often reprinted, quoted from, and plagiarized. Some students of Shakespeare profess to see a parallel between Polonius advice to Laertes and Burghley's practical counsel to his son Robert.The advice that these treatises offer is materialistic and even cynical, because the writers, moving in a political milieu, were realists who were attempting to provide instruction to their sons that would ensure success they would have cared not at all for the idealistic niceties. The distinction and position of Burghley and Raleigh may in part account for the popularity of their manuals in the seventeenth century, long after their deaths, but obviously both works possessed qualities congenial to the age, and readers approved of the way they mingled virtue and pragmatism.Of the three works, Dr. Wright comments, Osborne's "must be regarded as a literary creation in addition to being a practical manual composed for the use of a particular person."The student of English history will find this book a valuable addition to his library.

ADVICE TO A SON or Directions For Your Better Conduct through the Various and Most Important Encounters of This Life under These General Heads. By Francis Osborne

I. Studies, etc.

II. Love and Marriage

III. Travel

IV. Government

V. Religion Conclusion

OXFORD

To the Reader

SUCH as make it their business with the spider to suck out the crudities and corruptions in books are unlikely to fail of matter here yet may come far short of the credit, and good might accrue to themselves and others did they pore less on what is really amiss and more on that which is not yet brought under a perfect knowledge (impossible to be taken up pure by those that begin but now to scramble for it), new opinions, though perhaps untrue, rather gaining than losing repute by opposition. This breeds matter of wonder why so many should hazard their fame by running and yelping after those prodigious wits of this last age, B., D., H., etc., men not unable with Abner to silence these swifter writers with the butt end of their quills, and so richly endowed from nature as they are able to traffic upon their single stock without obliging the credit of ancient authors, who, for aught I know, were of poorer parts and might learn of them were they in being. This is said to honor those that can take their pastime in the depths of reason, and not to shroud my poor interest under theirs whose books deserve better coverings than can be picked out of the choicest of my papers or theirs that have the impudence to traduce them. To conclude, many that can buy books want wit to use them.{33}

To His Son

SON: I have forborne to set your name on the forehead of these instructions, not that I am ashamed either of them or you, but for suchlike reasons:

First, because some truths I here endeavor to make legible the tyranny of custom and policy labors to conceal as destructive to the project of government and therefore unlikely to pass by wise men without a formal reproof, who have been long since taught by unerring experience that ignorance draws with the least reluctancy in the yoke of obedience, being of so sheepish a nature as she is nobody’s foe but her own.

Next, to spare you the trouble of arming your reason in way of defense upon every alarm they may receive from the censures of wiser or weaker judgments. For, not carrying the marks of your particular interest, you may stand, as it were, unseen behind the curtain of indifferency and hear without blushing the opinions of others, if chance or your will should please to make them the object of their discourse. Amongst whom if any accuse them as too cheap and obvious, they are unadvised questioners of their own charter, in case they should be fathers who were never denied yet the freedom to teach their children to manage an hobbyhorse without offering violence to gravity or discretion.

Neither do we so ordinarily fall through the unevenness or difficulty of the way as carelessness and ignorance in the journals of former experience. This makes it the greatest demonstration of paternal affection, like the pelican, to dissect myself before you, and by ripping up mine own bowels to let you see where the defects of humanity reside, which are not only the occasions of many corporeal diseases but of most of the misfortunes accompanying this life. And though in passing through so much weakness they are rendered more deficient than, considered in their own nature, in truth they are; yet being the best I am able to afford you, they cannot but be looked upon by you for as lively a monument of my love as if they bear the magisterial impress of a work of Solomon’s.

And in regard of time none can be more opportune than this, in which men carry breasts of steel against those of their own profession (some niceties excepted) under the imperious pretense of religion.

If any blinded with ignorance or misled by a more candid nature should engage for the sufficiency of these or anything else I have writ that may perhaps hereafter be made public, I am conscious of too many flaws in myself to be swelled beyond my natural proportion. Your sake alone produced them, that during the little time I have to live you might turn to my judgment upon all occasions without trouble, and converse with me, being dead, without fear.

There is no great difference between good days and evil when past; yet if thus fortified by the advice of a father no less than the prayers of an incomparable indulgent mother you should break out into extravagancies, presuming on the opinion of your own judgment and the mediation of our love, though it would be the severest curse remaining in the custody of fortune yet unlaid upon me, I doubt not but to receive more comfort from a patience able to bear it than you shall from a repentance sufficient to blot it out.

But it is neither delight in me nor charity unto you by jealousy to antedate crimes never yet committed. I desire you, therefore, to take these admonitions as marks to sail by, not for presages of shipwreck.

For any faults escaped here through haste or other infirmity, I hope your love will be large enough to cover them, not exposing out of ostentation or idleness your father’s shame; whereby not only what is perfect may prove useful, but the very mistakes and blots obtain as great a design by exercising your wit and industry in their emendation, which I expect you should faithfully perform in relation to these or anything else you find may traduce the credit or stain the memory of

YOUR LOVING FATHER, etc.

Advice to a Son

I. Studies, etc.

1. Free schools. 2. Universities. 3. Mere scholars. 4. Collegiate discipline. 5. Physic. 6. Volumes. 7, 8. History. 9. Choice books, negotiations, ambassadors. 10. Converse. 11. Pedants. 12. Strong lines. 13. Exercise, of 14. Style. 15. Letters. 16. Sordid phrases. 17. Courtesies. 18. Counsel. 19, 20. Secretaries. 21, 22. Intelligencers. 23. Serving wicked masters. 24. Observance. 25. Dependency. 26, Writing things dangerous. 27. Poetry. 28. Music. 29. Clothes. 30. Buying. 31. Horses. 32. Riding. 33. Wrestling, vaulting, fencing. 34, Swimming. 35, 36. Suretyship, trusting, 37. Public faith. 38. Contracts. 39. Implicit judging. 40, 41. Pride, baseness. 42. Gesture in speaking. 43. Boldness. 44. Covetousness. 45, 46, 47. Thrift. 48. Rising out of bed. 49. Eating. 50. Drinking, tobacco. 51, 52, 53. Drunkenness. 54. Diet, plots. 55, 56. Company. 57. Jeering. 58, 59. Proverbs, injuries, fighting duels. 60. Insulting. 61. Ordinaries. 62. Dogs, boys, whores. 63, 64, 65. Secrecy and boasting of the favors of women. 66. Married [women]. 67. Great ladies. 68. Masks, plays, etc.

1. Though I can never pay enough to your grandfather’s memory for his tender care in my education, yet I must observe in it this mistake: that by keeping me at home where I was one of my young masters I lost the advantage of my most docile time. For, not undergoing the same discipline, I must needs come short of their experience that are bred up in free schools, who by plotting to rob an orchard, etc., run through all the subtleties required in taking of a town, being made by use familiar to secrecy and compliance with opportunity, qualities never after to be attained at cheaper rates than the hazard of all whereas these see the danger of trusting others and the rocks they fall upon by a too obstinate adhering to their own imprudent resolutions, and all this under no higher penalty than a whipping. And ‘tis possible this indulgence of my father might be the cause I afforded him so poor a return for all his cost.

2. As your education hath been befriended by a foundation, so you may endeavor the requital if God makes you able. However, let not the contrary afflict you, since it is observed by some that his name who burnt the temple of Diana outlasted theirs that built it—a fortune God grant may never fall upon our universities! Nevertheless, if zeal, overheated in the narrow hearts of men ignorant and covetous, should dry up the fountains of learning by appropriating their revenues and demolishing those monuments (to the fame of which foreign nations resort in pilgrimages for to offer up honor and admiration to these shrines never empty of glorious spirits and return more loaden with satisfaction than they could possibly bring prejudice ), yet she should pull down no more than she had formerly raised when incited by a contrary affection to charity and knowledge, therefore a provocation not strong enough to distemper a wise man’s patience who may easily observe in his own or precedent books of experience as great maps of devastation. For if one age did not level what another had erected, variety were lost and no means left to render the present or future generations famous or infamous.

3. Let not an overpassionate prosecution of learning draw you from making an honest improvement of your estate, as such do who are better read in the bigness of the whole earth than that little spot left them by their friends for their support.

4. I have observed in collegiate discipline that all the reverence to superiors learned in the hall or chapel is lost in the irreverent discourse you have of them in your chambers. By this you leave the principal business of youth neglected, which is to be perfect in patience and obedience, habits nowhere so exactly learned as in the foundations of the Jesuits could they be fetched thence without prejudice to religion and freedom.

5. If a more profitable employment pull you not too soon from the university, make some inspection into physic, which will add to your welcome wherever you come, it being usual, especially for ladies, to yield no less reverence to their physicians than their confessors. Neither doth the refusal of fees abate your profit proportionably to the advancement it brings to your credit. The intricacy of the study is not great after an exact knowledge in anatomy and drugs is attained, not hard by reason of the late helps. Yet I advise you this: under such caution as not to imagine the diseases you read of inherent in yourself, as some melancholic young men do that make their first experiments upon their own bodies to their perpetual detriment. Therefore, you may live by, not upon, physic.

6. Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew Fair, may proclaim plenty of labor and invention but afford less of what is delicate, savory, and well-concocted than smaller pieces. This makes me think that though upon occasion you may come to the table and examine the bill of fare set down by such authors, yet it cannot but lessen ingenuity still to fall aboard with them, human sufficiency being too narrow to inform with the pure soul of reason such vast bodies.

7. Be conversant in the speeches, declarations, and transactions occasioned by the last wars, out of which more natural and useful knowledge may be sucked than is ordinarily to be found in the moldy records of antiquity.

8. When I consider with what contradiction reports arrived at us during our late civil wars, I can give the less encouragement to the reading of history, romances never acted being born purer from sophistication than actions reported to be done, by which posterity hereafter, no less than antiquity heretofore, is likely to be led into a false or at best but a contingent belief. Caesar, though in this happy that he had a pen able to grave into neat language what his sword had first more roughly cut out, may in my judgment abuse the reader; for he that for the honor of his own wit doth make people speak better than can be supposed men so barbarously bred were able, may possibly report they fought worse than really they did. Of a like value are the orations of Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and most other historians, which doth not a little prejudice the truth of all the rest.

9. A few books well studied and thoroughly digested nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth as ordinary students use. And of these choice must be had answerable to the profession you intend. For the statesman, French authors are best, as most fruitful in negotiations, and memoirs left by public ministers and by their secretaries published after their deaths, out of which you may be able to unfold the riddles of all states, none making more faithful reports of things done in all nations than ambassadors, who cannot want the best intelligence because their princes’ pensioners unload in their bosoms all they can discover. And here by way of prevention let me inform you that some of our late ambassadors, which I could name, impaired our affairs by treating with foreign princes in the language of the place, by which they did not only descend below their master’s dignity but their own discretion, betraying for want of words or gravity the intrinsic part of their employment and going beyond their commission oftener by concession than confining themselves within it or to it, the true rule for a minister of state not hard to be gained by a resolute contest, which if made by an interpreter, he like a medium may intercept the shame of any impertinent speech which eagerness or indiscretion may let slip Neither is it a small advantage to gain so much time for deliberation what is fit farther to urge, it being besides too much an honoring of their tongue and undervaluing your own to profess yourself a master therein, especially since they scorn to learn yours. And to show this is not grounded on my single judgment, I have often been informed that the first and wisest Earl of Pembroke did return an answer to the Spanish ambassador in Welsh, for which I have heard him highly commended.

10. It is an aphorism in physic that unwholesome airs, because perpetually sucked into the lungs, do distemper health more than coarser diet used but at set times. The like may be said of company, which if good is a better refiner of the spirits than ordinary books.

11. Propose not them for patterns who make all places rattle where they come with Latin and Greek. For the more you seem to have borrowed from books, the poorer you proclaim your natural parts which only can properly be called your own.

12. Spend no time in reading, much less writing strong lines, which like tough meat ask more pains and time in chewing than can be recompensed by all the nourishment they bring.

13. Books flatly writ debase your style; the like may be truly objected to weak preachers and ignorant company, pens improving like children’s legs proportionally to their exercise, so as I have seen some stand amazed at the length of their own reach when they came to be extended by employment, as appeared in the late King Charles, who after his more imperious destiny had placed him under the tutorage of an unavoidable necessity attained a pen more majestical than the crown he lost.

14. The way to elegancy of style is to employ your pen upon every errand, and the more trivial and dry it is the more brains must be allowed for sauce. Thus, by checking all ordinary invention, your reason will attain to such an habit as not to dare to present you but with what is excellent. And if void of affectation it matters not how mean the subject is, there being the same exactness observed by good architects in the structure of the kitchen as the parlor.

15. When business or compliment calls you to write letters, consider what is fit to be said were the party present and set down that.

16. Avoid words and phrases likely to be learned in base company lest you fall into the error the late Archbishop Laud did, who, though no ill speaker, yet blunted his repute by saying in the Star Chamber, “Men entered the Church as a tinker and his bitch do an alehouse.” But this may easily be declined by those who read for their imitation the incomparable lines of the late king, written in a style as free from affectation as levity.

17. Grant, if ever, a courtesy at first asking; for as expedition doubles a benefit, so delay converts it into little less than an injury and robs you of the thanks—the fate of churlish natures. Whereas some I have known able to apparel their refusals in such soft robes of courtship that it was not easily to be discerned whether the request or denial were most decent.

18. Be not nice in assisting with the advantages nature or art may have given you such as want them, who do not seldom in exchange part with those of fortune to such as can...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• A MEMORIAL FOR THOMAS CECIL (1561). By William Cecil, Lord Burghley
• CERTAIN PRECEPTS FOR THE WELL ORDERING OF A MAN’S LIFE (ca. 1584). By William Cecil, Lord Burghley
• SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS SON AND TO POSTERITY (2nd ed., 1632)
• ADVICE TO A SON or Directions For Your Better Conduct through the Various and Most Important Encounters of This Life under These General Heads. By Francis Osborne
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER