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Aula
Lucis |
To Seleucus Abantiades:
What you are I need not tell you: what I am you know already. Our Acqaintance began with my childhood, and now you see what you have purchased. I can partly refer my inclinations to yourself, and those only which I derive from the contemplative order; for the rest are beside your influence. I present you with the fruits of them, that you may see my light has water to play withal. Hence it is that I move in the sphere of generation and fall short of that test of Heraclitus: "Dry light is best soul." I need not expound this to you, for you are in the centre and see it. Howsoever, you may excuse me if I prefer conceptions to fancies. I could never affect anything that was barren, for sterility and love are inconsistent. Give me a knowledge that is fertile in performances, for theories without their effects are but nothings in the dress of things. How true this is you can tell me. If I but recite what is your own you must not therefore undervalue it, being in some sense a sacrifice; for men have nothing to give but what they receive. Suffer me then at the present to stand your censer and exhale that incense which your own hands have put in. I dare not say this is revelation, not can I boast with the prodigious artist you read of that I have lived three years "in the realm of light." It is enough that I have light, as the King of Persia had his Bride of the Sun; and truly, I think it happiness to have seen that candle lodged which our fathers judged to be wandering light, a light seeking habitation. But I grow absurd. I speak as if I would instruct you. Now — methinks — you ask me: Who reads this? It is I, Sir, that read the tactics here to Hannibal and teach him to break rocks with vinacre. I am indeed somewhat pedantic in this but the liberty you are still pleased to allow me has carried me beyond my cue. It is trespass you know that's very ordinary with me and some junior colleagues. Not can I omit those verses which you have been sometimes pleased to apply to this forwardness of mine.
Such was the
steed in Grecian poets famed,
Proud Cyllarus, by Spartan Pollux tamed;
Such courses bore to fight the god of Thrace
And such Achilles, was thy warlike race.
It is my opinion, Sir, that truth cannot be urged with too much spirit, so that I have not sinned here as to the thing itself, for the danger's only in your person. I am afraid my boldness has been such I may be thought to fall short of that reverence which I owe you. This is indeed which I dare call a sin, and I am so far from it that it is my private wonder how I came to think of it. Suffer me then to be impertinent for once and give me leave to repent of an humour which I am confident you place not among my faults but among your own indulgences.
Your humble servant
S.N.
From Heliopolis, 1651
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