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Chapter 4

Philanax’ Letter

Kalander continues. He does not know what the oracle said to make Basilius retire to the country. He tells Palladius how his son Clítophon had found a letter from Philanax, a nobleman whom Basilius assigned to take his place during his retirement. In the letter Philanax urges Basilius not to give his daughters the feeling that he does not trust them, and not to put Pamela in the hands of such a person as Dametas. (1593 ed. 6v.13)

“What I have told you now is no more than every Arcadian knows. But I have determined there is only one living person to whom the prince has imparted what moved him to this strange solitariness. This I conjecture, and indeed more than conjecture, from an accident which I will now recount to you.

“My only son, Clitophon, is absent now preparing for his marriage, which we soon will celebrate here. This son of mine was a gentleman of the bedchamber when my master Basilius still kept his court. After it was disbanded, my son returned home and showed me a paper among other things that he had gathered. It was a copy of a letter that the prince had read and laid afterwards on a window seat, presuming that nobody would dare to look at his correspondence. Yet my son not only took the time to read it but to copy it. In truth I blame Clitophon for the curiosity that made him forget his duty. Kings’ secrets should not be revealed. However, since it was done, I was content to take whatever profit would come thereby.

“Here is the letter, which I have carried with me ever since. Before I read it to you, I must tell you from whom it came; a nobleman of this country named Philanax, appointed regent by the prince during his retirement, and most worthy to be so, for there lives no man whose excellent wit more simply embraces integrity. No one can question his unfeigned love for his master except to wonder whether he loves Basilius better as a man or as a prince. He has a rare temperament, unlike most men, who either servilely yield to all appetites or, fancying good in obstinate austerity, neglect the prince’s person. This, then, is the man who, above all (and most worthy) the prince chiefly loves. Philanax was lying sick, and the prince must have written to him upon his return from Delphos, disclosing his growing determination to act upon some oracle that he had received there. Whereupon Philanax replied:

Philanax’ Letter to Basilius

Most respected and beloved prince! If at your going to Delphos you had been as pleased to use my humble service as you are now, I should have spoken in better season and to better purpose. If my speech had prevailed, you would now be far less in danger, and much more in quietness. I would then have said that wisdom and virtue being the only destinies appointed to man to follow, we should in them seek all our knowledge since such guides cannot fail us. Besides inward comfort, knowledge and virtue also lead directly to prosperity. Even at a time when wickedness prevails in the world, evil never happens to one who is in the company of virtue.

I would also have said that the heavenly powers are to be reverenced rather than used. Instead of searching out hidden counsels to determine our future, we should seek mercies through prayer; the heavenly powers have left us better guides in ourselves. Prophecies are but fancies, either vain or infallible, not to be respected or else not to be prevented. But since it is weakness to recall what should have been done, and since your command embraces what will be done, I do (most dear lord) with humble boldness say that your going pleases me no better than the cause of your going.

These thirty years you have governed this region in such a way that neither your subjects have lacked justice in you nor you obedience in them, and your neighbors have found you so hurtlessly strong that they thought it better to rest in your friendship than make new trial of your enmity. If order thus arises from the good constitution of your state, and from your wise providence, which has prevented all those things that might encumber your happiness, why should you now seek new courses? Your own example should comfort you to continue as you were; to me it is most certain that no destiny nor influence whatsoever (though it has not pleased you to tell me the oracle’s exact words) can bring man’s wit to a higher point than can wisdom and goodness.

Why should you deprive yourself of government for fear of losing your government, like one that kills himself for fear of death? Nay, rather, if this oracle is worthy of account, arm your courage the more against it, for who will stick to him that abandons himself? Let your subjects have you in their eyes, let them see the benefits of your justice every day; they prefer present sureties to uncertain changes. Lastly, whether your time call you to live or die, do it like a prince.

Now for your second resolution, which is to suffer no worthy prince to be a suitor to either of your daughters, but while you live, to keep them both unmarried and to kill the joy of posterity, as it were, which in your time you may still enjoy, moved perchance by a misunderstood oracle. If the affection of the father to his own children cannot plead sufficiently against such fancies, what shall I say? Certain it is that the God who is God of nature never teaches unnaturalness. And I hold the same mind touching your banishing your daughters from company, lest strange loves—I know not what—should follow. Certainly, sir, nature promises nothing in my ladies (your daughters) but goodness. Their education by your fatherly care has been till now most fit to restrain all evil, giving them virtuous delights for their minds and not making them grieve for lack of well-ruled liberty. Now you suddenly constrain them, and what can that do but argue suspicion?—no more unpleasant than unsure for the preserving of virtue.

That is the surest way to untame a woman’s mind. How can a cage please a bird; how cannot a dog but grow fiercer with tying? Rage stirs the mind to think, and to think about that from which she is restrained. If you hide something, it becomes a treasure or a thing of great delight, and catches people’s fancies. And thoughts, once awakened, are surely harder to keep from accomplishment than before to have kept the mind—as yet undefiled—from thinking.

Lastly, consigning so principal a charge as the princess Pamela (whose mind goes beyond the governing of many thousands such) to such a person as Dametas, besides being strange, comes from a very evil ground, that ignorance should be the mother of faithfulness. O no! He cannot be good that knows not why he is good, but is good only insofar as fortune may keep him unassayed. For coming once to trial, his rude simplicity is either easily turned or easily deceived. Thus what had seemed the first foundation of his faith becomes the last excuse of his fault.

Thus far has your commandment and my zeal drawn me that I—like a man in a valley who may discern hills ahead, or like a poor ferryman who may spy a rock—humbly submit to your gracious consideration, beseeching you again to stand wholly upon your own virtue, as the surest way to maintain you in what you are and to avoid any evil which may be imagined.

“By the contents of this letter,” Kalander said, “you may perceive that the cause of all was vanity, which possesses many who, seeing our poor waystation of life as a perpetual mansion, crave the certainty of knowing things to come, wherein nothing is so certain as our continual uncertainty.

“In particular points what the oracle was, in faith I know not, and neither did Philanax, as you may see by one place in his letter. But it is clear that Basilius’ judgment, corrupted by his princely habits, heard rather than followed the wise (as I take it) counsel of Philanax. Basilius left the helm of his government, much to the amazement of the people, who believe many strange rumors. There is fear of danger from, or to, Basilius’ nephew, the valiant Amphialus. And in those who are ambitious among the nobility, there is much envy of Philanax to see him so advanced, though (to speak simply) he deserves more than many of us in Arcadia.

“The prince has hidden himself away, as I told you, and he has plainly confessed that while he breathes, his daughters shall not have husbands but keep solitary with him, where no one has leave to visit him at any time except for a certain priest, excellent in poetry, whom Basilius makes write out such things as he likes best, the priest being no less delightful in conversation than needful for devotion. Basilius also enjoys the company of about twenty shepherds, some for his exercise, some for eclogues.

“And now you know as much as myself. If I have held you over long, lay the fault upon my old age, which in its very disposition is talkative. It may be,” he said smiling, “that nature loves to exercise most that part which is least decayed, and that is our tongue, or it may be that we cannot except by utterance make known our knowledge, the only thing whereof we poor old men can brag. Or it may be that men seek to eternize themselves by all means, so much the more as they near their end, and that they do so not only by their children but by speeches and writings recommended to the memory of hearers and readers. But this much I will say for myself: that I have not laid these matters either so openly or largely to any as to yourself—so much, if much I fail not, do I see in you that makes me both love and trust you.”

“Never may he be old,” answered Palladius, “who does not reverence that age whose heaviness, in weighing down the frail and fleshly balance, as much raises the noble and spiritual. You might have proffered another reason as well, that it’s wisdom that inclines the old to bestow their good advice—and that I have received from you, never to be forgotten without ungratefulness.

“Now, of the many strange conceits you told me that have possessed your prince, the last would not seem the least strange to me—that he should conceive such pleasure in shepherds’ discourse—except that, as you told me, this country is notable for such wits. Indeed, myself having been brought not only to this place but to my life by Strephon and Claius, I found in their conference wits as might become the shepherds Homer speaks of—shepherds who govern peoples, senators who hold counsel in their sheepcote.”

“Those two,” said Kalander, “and especially Claius, are beyond the rest by as much as learning commonly adds to nature. Having neglected wealth in favor of knowledge, they less impaired the meaner than they bettered the better—despite which it is a sport to hear how they credit love for strengthening their powers of thought.

“But certainly all the people of this country, from high to low, are given to sports of wit. You would wonder to hear how soon even children will versify. It is common even among the lowest class to make songs and dialogues in meter. Either love sharpens the brain, or, long peace having begun the process, example and emulation further it. Even the clown Dametas will stumble sometimes on some songs that might become a better brain.

“No people are as excellent in that skill as the shepherds. Since their living rests only on looking after their beasts, they have ease, the nurse of poetry. Neither are our shepherds such as I hear shepherds are in other countries; instead, they own their sheep, and either they care for their sheep themselves or their children give daily attendance. Truly it would delight you when two or three of them meet together under some tree or by some riverside to hear their rural muse. How prettily they deliver sometimes joys, sometimes lamentations, sometimes challenges to one another—sometimes under hidden forms putting forth such matter as otherwise they would not dare express. A judge will award the best a prize, for which they are no less glad than great princes for their triumphs. Then the judge sets down in writing all that was said (although with more leisure his pen may polish the rudeness of an unthought-on song).

“Of course the prince has the choice of all, either for goodness of voice or pleasantness of wit, among whom there may be two or three strangers made weary of the world’s eyes by inward melancholies, who have come to spend their lives among the country people of Arcadia. And their conversation being well thought of, the prince grants them his presence, and by his watching with great courtesy and generosity, he animates the shepherds to labor the more exquisitely for his good liking. No blame goes to the prince for sometimes listening to them, only from hearing them in private instead of in company. Nor do I blame my master for advancing a countryman such as Dametas, since God forbid that outward lowness should hinder the promotion of worthiness; indeed such is found among various members of that class. But he chose a mind so base it sinks even now a thousand degrees lower than the basest body could drag the basest fortune—though it might be said for the prince that he trusts his simple plainness, and has only advanced him to being chief herdsman. Still, all honest hearts feel that the trust of their lord goes beyond any advancement.

“But I always spend too long on him whenever he crosses the path of my speech, and I see by the shadow of yonder tower that it is a fitter time to have supper and pay the duties we owe our stomachs than to break the air with my idle discourses. I could have known better from Homer (whom you just mentioned), who never entertained either guests or hosts with long speeches till the mouth of hunger was thoroughly stopped.”

So with that he rose, leading Palladius through the garden again to the parlor where they usually supped. Palladius, however, assured him that he had already been fed more to his satisfaction than he could be by the most skillful trencher-men5 of Media.

trencher-men] cooks.