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Follow Henry Wotton's step-by-step guide to peace and contentment.Diplomat and author, who was Britain's ambassador to Venice for nearly twenty years.The National Portrait GalleryIf you're somebody who likes to read the Agony Aunt section of a monthly magazine or books about finding happiness, then today's poem is definitely for you. The Character of A Happy Life reads like the 17th century equivalent of a self-help guide, written by eminent diplomat and traveller Henry Wotton. In this ambitious poem, Henry sets out to distill the secrets of happiness and writes about how one can attain this elusive state of being. His advice is varied and plentiful and over six verses he probably lists a couple of dozen dos-and-don'ts for you to unpick; however, despite the sheer number of suggestions he has for us, there are some core themes that he returns to time and again. It’s very important to Henry that a person should be able to control their own thoughts and actions, and not blindly follow in the footsteps of others. He also warns against the false trappings of material success and the temptation of, shall we say, questionable habits (which he terms vice) as a substitute for true happiness. At times, the poem is quite didactic in tone (didactic means that the writer deliberately sets out to teach readers a lesson or impart a moral) which was not unusual for pieces written in this period of English writing. So, without further ado, let’s discover secrets to finding happiness for ourselves- explained later in six easy steps: How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another’s will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!   Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied unto the world by care Of public fame or private breath;   Who envies none that chance doth raise, Nor vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise; Nor rules of state, but rules of good;   Who hath his life from rumours freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make oppressors great;   Who God doth late and early pray More of His grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a religious book or friend;   This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And having nothing, yet hath all. #1: Pay Attention at School, Kids.Clear thinking, and the ability to tell reality from fantasy, is a crucial component of happiness.Henry’s poem begins with a simple statement of intent: How happy is he… You can think of this as the poet’s central thesis (or theme) that the rest of his poem will go on to elaborate upon. He sets out his stall with strength and determination, using a particular type of alliteration called aspirant. Made with the letter H, aspirant is a good way of expressing emotion (think about the way you might expel a big breath) and conveys both Henry’s assertiveness and sets a ‘happy’ and upbeat tone for the verses that follow. Throughout the poem, Henry will employ a type of repetition called anaphora (which is repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of lines of poetry). Take a moment to count the number of lines beginning with the word whose (or who). The effect of anaphora is to give Henry’s poem that assertive tone, as if he is a wise and experienced teacher delivering a moral lesson to you, dear reader.Some writers advise you to begin with your strongest argument, and it’s up to you to decide whether that means Henry’s first piece of advice is his most important. Crucial to a person’s happiness is the ability to think for oneself. He uses the word taught to suggest this process is a lifelong lesson that one should begin almost as soon as one is born. He warns: serveth not another’s will, implying that people who have independence of thought and control over their own decision-making tend to be happier people. While this might seem self-evident to you and I, and is one of the core purposes of modern education, remember that Henry was writing in the late 1500s and early 1600s. While not wanting to generalise, it’s true that many ordinary people in Henry’s day would not necessarily have had the luxury of independent thought. Literacy in England at the time of Henry’s death (in 1639) hovered around 30 percent – for men (women’s literacy struggled to break one in ten until the 18th century) – and most people had finished school by the time they were seven or eight years old. In this context, Henry’s idea that one must be born and taught is not something that we should take for granted!If you would like to discover more about this poem, visit the shop and download the study bundle for The Character of a Happy Life. As well as quizzes, worksheets and help with your own analytical writing, you'll find an illustrated powerpoint giving you line-by-line notes and annotations on the poet's use of language as well as various poetic and technical devices. This resource is fully editable, so you can add your own notes and discoveries as you study. However, let’s not kid ourselves, Henry’s audience was most likely to be gentlemanly (remember he was a diplomat and a man of letters) so anyone with access to poetry like this was surely educated. You may already have noticed the way his hypothetical listener is a ‘he’, which we should try not to hold against him too much. Henry exhorts those lucky enough to possess an educated mind to put critical thinking skills to use as a form of protection against dishonesty and deception. His metaphorical comparison of clear thinking to a suit of armour sets the pattern for Henry’s use of figurative language throughout the poem. In this example, the idea of being armoured in honest thought suggests that a person who thinks for themselves will be protected against ‘weapons’ of dishonesty, flattery and deceit, as one wearing plate mail would be protected from sword blows. Similarly, when he suggests that truth can be wielded as a skill, he is speaking figuratively. What’s interesting about these metaphors is they convey the idea that concepts such as honesty and truth can be learned; in Henry’s view, these are not inherent character traits. Nobody is born wearing armour; armour is forged and acquired, shaped and worn. In this way Henry suggests that happiness and contentment, insofar as it relies on honesty and truth, can be acquired through patience, skill and learning. In modern parlance, we might say that Henry has a growth mindset.#2: Keep Calm and Stay BalancedPlacing too much importance on the opinions of others is a sure way to unhappiness.Henry reiterates the idea of independence at the beginning of this stanza, writing whose passions not his masters are. Reiteration is a form of repetition by which the same idea is expressed in a different way, and you might like to compare the first line of stanza two with the line serveth not another’s will. What’s different here is that Henry cautions you against being ruled by your own emotions (passions), by which he surely means powerful negative emotions such as anger or fear. Henry appears to be a logical man who likes to keep an even temper, an idea that he’ll return to in the fifth stanza when he mentions the value of grace. Another thematic seed that is starting to bear fruit is that of 'freedom and servitude', revealed through a lexical field of words such as serveth, master, untied, rules, freed (twice), oppressors, servile bonds and Lord. So, throughout the poem, Henry keeps linking the concept of happiness to that of different ‘freedoms’: freedom of thought, freedom from anger, from oppression, and from the illusory temptations of the material world.The second verse also introduces a stylistic feature of Henry’s poem, which is the use of contrasting words – often binary oppositions – to suggest that happiness lies not in the extremes of life, but by finding a way to walk the middle path. In this stanza, Henry presents public fame and private breath as binary opposites which prevent one fr

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