SOURCE: Robertson, Jean. “The Use Made of Owen Felltham's Resolves: A Study in Plagiarism” Modern Language Review 39, no. 2 (April 1944): 108-15.

[In the following essay, Robertson cites numerous examples of how selections from Felltham's Resolves were plagiarized by subsequent writers.]

There is no evidence to show that the publication of Owen Felltham's Resolues Diuine, Morall, Politicall in 1623¹ caused any stir in the literary world; but their reception must have been sufficiently warm to warrant the publication of Resolues A Duple Century one new an other of a second Edition in 1628. The demand for this volume necessitated further editions in 1629, 1631, 1634, 1636 and 1647. As will be seen, these quarto editions of the Resolves were well known and well used by many writers. They were followed by four folio editions (containing many additions and alterations made by Felltham before his death²) in 1661, 1670, 1677 and 1696; and by a final edition of Felltham's works in 1709.

Actual references to Felltham's writings during the seventeenth century are remarkably few. Thomas Randolph wrote an unsolicited poem in appreciation of the literary and moral qualities of the Resolves, and this is the only public eulogy that Felltham seems to have received in his lifetime. The Resolves are quoted four times in the expanded version of David Tuvill's Vade Mecum (1629). Many others signified their approval and admiration by tacitly borrowing phrases from the Resolves for insertion in their own works. Plagiarism in the seventeenth century was not the literary offence that it has since become: but even so, it is hard to believe that the use made of the Resolves by the Earl of Manchester and Richard Younge should have been countenanced. Perhaps the depredations of the former were regarded as an honour, and it is probable that Felltham did make an ineffectual protest against the appropriations of the latter.

It is to be expected that prose writers would borrow more readily from the Resolves than the poets; yet, the most interesting use of them was made by a poet. Professor L. C. Martin has pointed out several parallels between the poems of Henry Vaughan and the Resolves.³ As a translator Vaughan was quick to realize the merits of the English versions that Felltham appended to his quotations from the Classics.⁴ The only borrowing of this kind not recorded by Professor Martin is in Olor Iscanus, De Ponto, lib. 4°, Eleg. 3^a, lines 53-58:⁵

All that we hold, hangs on a slender twine
And our best states by sudden chance decline;
Who hath not heard of Crœsus proverb'd gold
Yet knowes his foe did him a pris'ner hold?
He that once aw'd Sicilia's proud Extent
By a poor art could famine scarse prevent;

from Resolves, I, 49, “That all things haue a like progression and fall”:⁶

All that man holds, hangs but by slender twine,
By sudden chance the strongest things decline.

and Resolves, I, 46, “Of the Waste and change of Time”:

Who has not heard of Crœsus heapes of Gold,
          Yet knowes his Foe did him a prisoner hold?
He that once aw'd Sycilias proud extent,
          By a poore Art, could Famine scarce prevent.

Only once, when drawing on the Resolves, does Vaughan announce that he is quoting, or pay any sort of tribute to Felltham (though not by name); in the preface to Silex Scintillans there occurs a passage based on Felltham's essay “Of Idle Bookes” introduced by the remark ‘It was wisely considered, and piously said by one, That he would read no idle books’.⁷ Far more interesting than any direct quotations from the Resolves in Prefaces, or in the translations, are the traces of Felltham's influence to be discerned in Vaughan's original poems. Once again I refer the reader to Professor Martin's notes for examples of this debt.

Felltham's influence was most marked on the semi-religious essayists such as Arthur Warwick, Joseph Henshaw⁸ and Bishop Beveridge. John Hewytt seems to have embroidered one of his sermons with phrases adapted from the Resolves.⁹ Hewytt combined religious fervour with a liking for conceits and strange words: he speaks of the face of the day as ‘benegroed’ over by the night. The Earl of Manchester, who plagiarizes Felltham in Al Mondo, may be classed with these writers; in form and subject-matter Al Mondo or Contemplations of Death and Immortality resembles William Drummond's The Cypress Grove. It enjoyed an immense popularity in the seventeenth century, being first published in 1631, and reaching its fifteenth edition in 1688, at which date it was described in the preface as a very suitable gift for funeral guests in place of the customary black kid gloves. During the nineteenth century there were several reprints, and the gravity and loftiness of the style have been uniformly praised. That Al Mondo is in reality a mosaic of sentences culled from such varied sources as the Bible, classical authors, Bacon's Essayes and Felltham's Resolves has not prevented all the credit going to the Earl of Manchester. Sometimes the Resolves are only drawn on for a pleasing sentence:

He that dies daily, seldom dies dejectedly.¹⁰

Al Mondo—The second step, to be dying daily

Degreeingly to grow to greatness is the course of the world.¹¹

Al Mondo—To dye by little and little

The houses of the dead, and the urned bones do meet with foul hands, for this nature hath provided …¹²

Al Mondo—The Souls Excellency

Some can as willingly leave the world, as others can forbear the Court.¹³

Al Mondo—Body and soul parting

At other times Manchester uses a longer passage—paraphrasing or reproducing according to his fancy. It is to be expected that he should have turned first to Felltham's essays on death, and it is equally natural that, having had recourse to them, he should have glanced at the other essays. Two examples will suffice to illustrate this method of composition:

There is no Spectacle more profitable, or more terrible, than the sight of a dying man … man by death is absolutely divided and disman'd. That grosse object which is left to the spectators eyes; is now onely a composure but of the two baser Elements, water, and Earth: that now it is these two only, that seeme to make the body, while the two purer, Fire and Ayre, are wing'd away.

Resolves, I, 47, “Of Death”

There is no spectacle in the world so profitable, or more terrible, than to behold a dying man; to stand by, and see a man dismanned … but to see those Elements which, compounded, made the body: to see them divided and the man dissolved, is a rufull sight. So dependent is the life of Man, that it cannot want one Element; Fire and Air, these fly upward; Water and Earth, these sink downwards.

Al Mondo—For the manner of dying

Epicurus makes it a Spirit, mixt of fire and ayre … some, a selfe-moving number; … But for all these, I could never meete with any, that could give it so in an absolute Definition, that another or himselfe could conceive it.

Resolves, I, 64, “Of the Soule”

Some will haue it a spirit mixt of fire and air; Others a self-moving number; … Never any could give it such a definition, that either another or himself could conceive it.

Al Mondo—The Souls Excellency

The numerous passages borrowed from the Resolves in the works of Richard Younge, the puritan pamphleteer, would be surprising were it not for Younge's omnivorous appetite for borrowings. Felltham was not frantically opposed to the Puritans; he took the sensible line that there were good and bad Puritans, and the good he would love ‘immutably’. Younge cannot have been in accord with all the things that Felltham said in Resolves, I, 5, “Of Puritans”: however, he used this essay in Sinne Stigmatized:

One will have him [the Puritan] one that lives religiously, and will not revell it in a shorelesse excesse.

Resolves, I, 5, “Of Puritans”

… where he shall be scofft at, and called Puritane, if he will not revell it with them in a shorelesse excesse.

Sinne Stigmatized, 68

It is rather difficult to identify Younge's pamphlets as he was continually changing their titles: Sinne Stigmatized had appeared in 1638 as The Drunkard's Character under the pseudonym Younge often used, ‘R. Junius’. His first long pamphlet, which appeared in 1637, was entitled ‘A Counterpoyson: or, soverain antidote against all griefe. As also, the Benefit of Affliction; and how to Husband it so, that the weakest Christian (with blessing from above) may be able to support himself in his most miserable Exigents. Together with the Victory of Patience. Extracted out of the choicest Authors, Ancient and Moderne, both Holy and Humane, Necessary to be read of all that suffer any tribulation.’ As will be seen from the title, Younge did not claim that Counterpoyson was an original work: in the preface to the enlarged second edition of 1641 he explained his method of compiling a book with a metaphor from the Resolves:

Wee feed not the body, with the food of one dish onely; nor does the sedulous Bee, thyme all her thighes from one Flowers single vertues. Shee takes the best from many; and together she makes them serve: not without working that to Honey, which the putrid Spider would convert to poyson.

Resolves, I, 12

Wherefore I have added to the former selected flowers, as many more, whence any sedulous Bee may loade himselfe with Hony … to the Ingenuous Reader, that sucks Hony from the selfe same flower which the Spider doth poyson.¹⁴

Counterpoyson, To the Reader

The apology for the deficiencies of the book is also couched in Felltham's words:

Nothing in this World can bee framed so entirely perfect, but that it shall have in it, some delinquencies, to argue more were in the comprisor.

Resolves, I, 43

No humane action can be framed so perfect, but it shall have some delinquencies; to prove that more were in the Comprisor.

Counterpoyson, To the Reader

The whole text of Counterpoyson, a patchwork quilt made out of other men's work, is riddled with passages taken from the Resolves. For example, three Resolves go to the making of one passage in Section XIX:

Neglect will kill an injury, sooner than Revenge. … One told Chrysippus that his friend reproached him privately. Sayes he, Aye, but chide him not, for then he will doe as much in publique.

Resolves, I, 78

As for the crackers of the brain, and tongue-squibs, they will dye alone, if I shall not revive them. The best way to have them forgotten by others, is first to forget them my selfe.

Resolves, I, 2

When the passenger gallops by, as if his feare made him speedy, the Curre followes him with an open mouth, and swiftnesse: let him walke by, in a confident neglect; and the Dogge will never stirre at him.

Resolves, I, 72

And this made Chrysippus, when one complained to him, that his friend had reproached him privately: answer, Ah, but chide him not, for then he will do as much in publike. Neglect will sooner kill an injury, than Revenge. These tongue-squibs or crackers of the braine will die alone, if we revive them not: the best way to have them forgotten by others, is first to forget them ourselves. Yea, to contemne an enemy, is better than either to feare him, or answer him. When the Passenger gallops by, as if his fear made him speedy, the Cur followes him with open mouth and swiftnesse; let him turne to the brawling Cur, and he will be more fierce; but let him ride by in a confident neglect, and the Dog will never stir at him, or at least will soon give over and be quiet.

Counterpoyson, Section XIX

Richard Younge's literary procedure evidently evoked some protest from the men whose works he had purloined in Counterpoyson without acknowledgement. Sinne Stigmatized, published in the following year (1638), is dedicated to the Bishop of Exeter, with an admission of guilt, and an apology for borrowing from his Lordship's works. The Dedication begins with righteous indignation, helped out with a phrase from Felltham's preface to the second edition of the Resolves.¹⁵ With incorrigible cheerfulness Younge admits that

So have I (under correction) filch't from your Lordships worthy Workes, and other Authors, (both divine and humane, whether Ancients or Neotericks) whatsoever elegant Phrases, pithy Sentences, curious Metaphors, witty Apophthegmes, sweet similitudes, or Rhetoricall expressions I could meet withall pertinent, wholesome and delectable.

In fact, as Younge goes on to say, he has only provided the thread to bind his borrowings together. In his defence, he declares that he is only doing what some modern writers do with the Ancients;¹⁶ and further,

I am no thiefe in it since I either say, or am ready to acknowledge of whom I had them. I have so made use of other mens wits as you may see I doe not steale but borrow.¹⁷

Felltham might have retorted that Younge never says from whom he is borrowing, and his being ready to make acknowledgement was not much satisfaction, especially as he goes on to admit that he has really forgotten where he did find most of his borrowings: anyway, his authors ‘were all, or almost all, so famous that they name themselves’: and finally, why inquire who wrote a sentence, so long as you enjoy and profit by reading it? One might reply to Younge's plea that ‘such as want stock of their own are forced to borrow’, that the uninventive should not attempt to write books. But he would be ready with his reply that his object (the lashing of vice) forced him to publish: and, still more unanswerably, that he liked doing it.

Sinne Stigmatized (‘which may also serve for a commonplace booke of the most usuall vertues and vices: or as a repository of rhetoricall figures and formes of speech’) is just the same medley that we find in Counterpoyson. Felltham is responsible for the bulk of the imagery. Sinne Stigmatized was first published as The Drunkard's Character, and is chiefly concerned with the castigation of drunkenness: hence we would expect to find Felltham's essay “Of Drunkennesse” being useful. His description of a drunkard only needs a little working up to make it sufficiently revolting for Younge's purpose:

What a Monster Man is, in his inebriations! a swimming Eye; a Face, both roast and sod; a temulentive Tongue, clammed to the roofe and gummes; a drumming Eare; a feavered Bodie; a boyling Stomacke; a Mouth nastie with offensive fumes; till it sicken the Braine with giddie verminations; a palsied Hand; and Legges tottering up and downe their moistened Burthen.

Resolves, I, 84

The Drunkard commonly hath (Vertumnus like) a brasill Nose, a swolne and inflamed Face; beset with goodly Chowles and Rubies, as if it were both rost and sod; swimming, running, glaring gogle Eyes, bleared, rowling and red; a Mouth nasty with offensive fumes, alwayes foaming or driveling; a fevorish Body; a sicke and giddy Braine, a Mind disperst; a boyling stomacke; rotten Teeth; a stinking Breath; a drumming Eare; a palsied Hand; gouty, staggering legs, that faine would goe, but cannot; a drawling, stammering, temulentive Tongue, clamb'd to the roofe and gummes.

Sinne Stigmatized, Section XV

There are traces of the Resolves in Cordial Councell (1644), and in Cure of Misprision (1646): but in his later and shorter pamphlets Younge did not have recourse to the Resolves nearly so frequently. Possibly Felltham found some effective means to stop his pillaging.

John Gadsbury, a noted astrologer, wanted his works to be read by the clergy and by cultured people generally. To this end, he strove to combine a belief in fate governed by the stars with a belief in orthodox Christianity. He was not alone in this attempt; many prominent divines of the day dabbled in astrology. Felltham was not, on the whole, favourably inclined to the art: it was, he declared, neglected by the wiser sort because we can only foretell ill, and what is the good of doing that? His arguments against the efficacy of astrological calculations reveal acquaintance with the technical jargon:

And indeed, the minute of Generation, Conception, and Production, are so hard to know justly; the Point of place so hard to finde: the Angles, the Aspects, and the Conjunctions of the Heavens so impossible to bee cast right in their influences, by reason of the rapid and Lightning-like Motion of the Spheares; that the whole Art, thorowly searched and examined, will appeare a meere fallacie and delusion of the wits of Men. If their Calculations bee from the seven Motive Spheares onely, how is there such difference in the lives of Children borne together, when their oblique motion is so slow, as the Moone, (though farre more speedy than any of the rest) is yet above seven and twenty dayes in her course? If their calculations be by their diurnall Motion, it is impossible to collect the various influences, which every title of a minute gives: Besides, in close Roomes, where the Windowes are clozed, the Fire, Perfumes, concourse of People, and the parentall humours, barre their operation from the Child.

Resolves, I, 96, “Of Divination”

Felltham concludes by supposing that it might be possible to foretell general inclinations, but not particular events. There is nothing to encourage an ardent astrologer in this essay. But Gadsbury did not go to the Resolves for astrology: he liked his pamphlets to have a literary flavour, and to this end he embellished them with quotations from Quarles, Henry More, Caryl, Sir Thomas Browne and others. In London's Deliverance Predicted (1665), Gadsbury sought to prove, by reference to astrology, that the end of the Plague was at hand. He devoted considerable space to proving, with some acrimony and little respect for those of the opposite opinion, that the Plague was not contagious; and therefore it was not only cowardly, but also futile to flee from London in the hope of escaping infection. Gadsbury's arguments against cowardice are strengthened by quotations from Felltham's essays “Of Fear and Cowardice” and “Of Fate.” In the longest passage only does Gadsbury indicate that he is using the words of another:

And valour (as one well observes) casts a kind of honour upon God, in that we shew, that we believe his goodness, while we trust our selves in danger upon his care onely; whereas the Coward eclipses his sufficiency, by unworthily doubting that God will not bring him off.¹⁸

London's Deliverance Predicted, VI, 31

On the same page, sentences from this essay and from another appear without acknowledgement:

In a Battell wee see the valiant man escape oft safe, by a constant keeping his ranke; when the Coward, shifting dangers, runnes by avoyding one, into the severall walkes of many.

Resolves, I, 71, “Of Fear and Cowardice”

Our owne wit often hunts us into the snares, that above all things we would shunne.

Resolves, I, 79, “Of Fate”

Cowards hoping to avoid dangers, rush ignorantly into them. A Bullet may sooner kill him that runs from the battle, then him that stoutly and resolutely joyns therewith; the truly valiant often escape untoucht. A man's own wit (when bridled by fear) hunts him into those snares, that above all things he would gladly shun.

London's Deliverance Predicted, p. 31

There is one example of plagiarism from the Resolves as late as 1718. Readers of The Entertainer: containing Remarks upon Men, Manners, Religion and Policy, published serially during 1717 and 1718, were unwittingly entertained with excerpts from the Resolves. The Entertainer was not, in all probability, the work of one man, and the Resolves are only used in certain papers. Nevertheless, one feels that the Remarks upon Men, Manners, Religion and Policy are modernized Resolves Divine, Moral and Political. At all events, one writer on the staff of The Entertainer, being rather short of his own coin, was lucky enough to hit on a copy of the Resolves; and relied on the obscurity of their author to prevent the discovery of his theft. He used one of the quarto editions (the last was published in 1647): he was, perhaps, unaware that a final edition of the revised Resolves was published in 1709. In Paper XII, Resolves, II, 1 and I, 57, furnish the material for a combined passage;¹⁹ and a similar use is made of two Resolves in Paper XV.²⁰ This Paper also contains an expansion of a few lines in Resolves, I, 25:

No willing Sinne was ever in the Act displeasing. Yet, is it not sooner past, than distastfull: though pleasure merries the Sences for a while: yet horrour after vultures the unconsuming heart.

Resolves, I, 25

… however pleasing and delightful they may seem in the Prosecution, are always bitter and distasteful in the End: They entail certain Misery on the Actors themselves, and very often on their Posterity. They may captivate the senses, gratify the Affections, and wrap the Soul into a Fool's Paradise for a while: but no sooner shall the Enjoyment be over, when Horrour will seize upon the Vitals, and act the Promethean vulture upon the unconsuming Conscience.

The Entertainer, XV

In Paper XIX the writer is again indebted to the Resolves:

Such effects workes Poetry, when it lookes to towring Vertues. It gives up a man to raptures; and inradiates the soule, with such high apprehensions: that all the Glories, which this World hath, hereby appeare, contemptible.

Resolves, I, 14

Divinity well ordered, casts forth a Baite, which angles the Soule onto the eare: and how can that cloze, when such a guest sits in it? … A good Orator should pierce the eare, allure the eye, and invade the minde of his hearer. And this is Seneca's opinion: Fit words are better than fine ones: … 'Tis much moving in an Orator, when the Soule seemes to speake, as well as the tongue.

Resolves, I, 20, “Of Preaching”

'Tis moving in an Orator when the Soul seems to speak as well as the Tongue; such Preaching melts us into Rapture, and inradiates the Understanding with high and Heavenly conceptions of Bliss and Glory: That the World and its glittering Pomp appears foolish and contemptible. … If we consider their Discourses [preachers of the last century] we shall find in them a Quick strength, a Round Brevity and an Elegant Purity, becoming the Holy Doctrine they promulge; their Sense nervous, their Sentences well turn'd, and their Points piercing; and fit Words always preferr'd to fine ones. Divinity thus dress'd up angles the Soul into the Organ of Hearing; and how can that be clos'd up when such a guest is enshrin'd in it?

The Entertainer, XIX

The Resolves do not appear again until Paper XLI in which Resolves, II, 63:

Envie, like the Worme, never runnes but to the fairest and ripest fruit: as a cunning Bloud-hound, it singles out the fattest Deere of the herd: 'tis a pitchy smoake, which wheresoever we finde, wee may bee sure there is a fire of Vertue … being bad, and shallow himselfe, he would damme up the streame, that is sweet, and silent: so by envying another, for his radiant lustre, he gives the World notice, how darke and obscure he is him selfe … 'tis onely the weake sighted, that cannot endure the light:

is boiled over rather than boiled down into

Envy, like a Worm, never runs but to the fairest and the ripest Fruit; like a cunning and well nosed Blood-Hound, it singles out the stateliest and fattest Deer of all the Herd; 'tis true it is a Pitchy-smoak, and wheresoever it curls and spires, there we may be sure to find the radiant fire of Virtue. Weak Opticks cannot endure the light, and those that are bad and shallow themselves endeavour to damm up the Stream that is transparent and serene; and by striving to obscure another's lustre, they alarm the World how dark a Hue they are themselves.

Whether this writer felt that he had exhausted Felltham's possibilities, or whether he left the staff of The Entertainer, this is the last time that the Resolves are used in that paper: and it is also the last time that another writer is found deliberately borrowing from Felltham. His influence waned in the eighteenth century: in 1734 appeared John Constable's Reflections upon Accuracy of Style. The author's main object was to animadvert on the style of an author disguised by the pseudonym Callicrates. In two places, Callicrates's style is ridiculed by likening it to passages from the Resolves. The image with which Resolves, I, 62 begins, ‘Every Man is a vast and spacious Sea’, is quoted as an example of an over-long metaphor, and Felltham's style is condemned as being ‘too artificial to last’. Yet Dr Johnson cites Felltham several times with approval in his Dictionary. The nineteenth-century articles and editions bear witness to a revival of interest; and, if we may rely upon the statement of J. Cumming,²¹ nineteenth-century clergymen (including Bishop Newton in his Practical Dissertations) were in the habit of quoting the Resolves in their sermons.

Notes

1. n.d. ent. 26 May 1623.

2. On 23 February 1667/8. See Jean Robertson, ‘Owen Felltham of Great Billing’, Notes and Queries, CLXXIII, no. 22 (27 November 1937) and Fred S. Tupper, ‘New facts regarding Owen Felltham’, Modern Language Notes, LIV (March 1939).

3. The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin (1914).

4. Felltham justified this practice in his address To the Reader in the second edition of the Resolves: ‘The next is, for the Poetry, wherein, indeed, I have beene strict, yet would be full. In my opinion, they disgrace our Language that will not give a Latine Verse his English, under two for one. I confesse, the Latine (besides the curiousnesse of the Tongue) hath in every Verse, the advantage of three or foure Syllables; yet if a man will labour for't, hee may turne it as short, and I beleeve, as full. And for this some late Translations are my proofe.’

5. The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin, I, 69.

6. This, and all subsequent quotations, are taken from the 6th edition (1636).

7. See The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin, II, 694.

8. Cf. Resolves, II, 1, Of Idle Bookes: ‘So I become guiltie by receiving, and he by thus conveying this lewdnesse unto me: He is the thiefe, and I the receiver; and what difference makes our Law betwixt them?’ and Henshaw, Horae Successivae, vol. I, p. 6: ‘If I cannot stop others mouthes I will stop my owne eares. The receiver is as bad as the thiefe.’

9. Cf. Resolves, I, 58, That no man alwayes sinnes unpunisht: ‘Whereas if he (Joseph) had coap'd with his Inticer, 'tis like he might haue swamme in Gold, and liv'd a lapling to the silke and dainties’, and Hewytt, Last Sermons (1658), Sermon II: ‘You must not stream out your Youth in Wine, and live a Lapling to the Silk and Dainties.’ And of also Resolves, I, 22: ‘Infatuated estate of Man! That the injoyment of a pleasure, must diminish it: That perpetuall use must make it, like a Piramide, lessening it selfe by degrees, till it growes at last to a punctum, to a nothing’, and Hewytt, Sermon II: ‘The whole world is not able to satisfie their ambition, but the aspiring Pyramid of their thoughts mounteth and lesseneth by degrees, till it come to a meer punctum.’ The N.E.D. cites Felltham as the authority for punctum. Cf. also Hewytt, Sermon III: ‘here is the punctum or centre, above which the circumference of our thoughts doth move. … All our vertues do centre in this punctum.’ Hewytt, Sermon II: ‘O man, thou that art an aery bubble, why art thou proud? Thou that art a bubble that is made of nothing, and when made, as soon blown to nothing’, may be an elaboration of Resolves, I, 47, ‘O what a bubble, what a puffe, what but a winke of life is man.’ The ‘hilling up of fatal gold’ in Sermon II is found also in Resolves, I, 32.

10. ‘He that dyes daily, seldome dyes dejectedly.’ Resolves, II, 5, Three things aggravate a Misery.

11. ‘Degreeingly to grow to greatnesse, is the course that he [God] hath left for Man.’ Resolves, I, 97, That 'tis best increasing by a little at once.

12. ‘The houses of the dead, and the urned bones, haue sometimes met with rude hands, that have scattered them.’ Resolves, I, 46, Of the waste and change of time.

13. ‘Some, that can as gladly leave this World, as the wise man, being old, can forbeare the Court.’ Resolves, I, 13, Of mans unwillingnesse to dye.

14. Cf. ‘there is no cheating, like the Felonie of Wit; He which theeves that, robs the Owner, and coozens those that heare him.’ Resolves, I, To the Reader; and ‘I see many make use of your lines, few acknowledge, none return to give thanks; but no cheating like the felony of wit; for he which thieves that, robs the owner, and coosens all that heare him’, Sinne Stigmatized, Dedication.

15. v. p. 111, n. 1.

16. ‘Observation. But you make over-bold in reaping that which other men bestowed the labour to sowe.’ ‘Answer. No bolder with Neotericks and Moderne Writers, then even themselves doe with Ancient Writers.’ Sinne Stigmatizéd, To the Reader.

17. Cf. ‘I have so used them, as you may see I doe not steale, but borrow.’ Resolves, To the Reader.

18. Cf. Resolves, I, 71: ‘And indeed valour casts a kinde of honour upon God; in that we shew that we beleeve his goodnesse, while we trust our selves in danger, upon his care onely: Whereas the Coward eclipses his sufficiencie, by unworthily doubting, that God will not bring him off.’ A later sentence ‘For when man mistrusts God, 'tis just with God to leave Man,’ is paraphrased on the same page of London's Deliverance Predicted: ‘If men will be afraid to trust God, it is no wonder that he refuses to protect them.’

19. Cf. Resolves, II, 1: ‘A lame Hand is better than a lewd Pen … a foolish sentence dropt upon paper, sets folly on a Hill, and is a Monument to make infamie eternall’, and Resolves, I, 57: ‘'Tis [ill company] like a Ship new trimmed, wheresoever you but touch, it soyles you’; with The Entertainer, XII: ‘recommend me rather to a lame Hand, than a Lewd Pen: such Compositions may be compar'd to a Ship new trimm'd, the least Touch do's smear and defile 'em. A foolish Sentence dropt upon Paper, may sometimes fix Folly upon an Hill, and raise an eternal Monument for Infamy.’

20. Cf. Resolves, II, 34: ‘Vice is a Peripateticke, alwayes in Progression’, and Resolves, II, 24: ‘He that lives in noted sinnes, is a false Lanthorne, which shipwrackes those that trust him’, with The Entertainer, XV: ‘Vice is a Peripatetick in its Progression. … 'Tis a false Lantern, which leads the Mariners upon Rocks and Shelves; and they that trust it can never escape.’

21. See Introduction to his edition of the Resolves (1800 and 1820).