and share whilst he keeps his Keys in his Bosom much more carefully than his Eyes Whilst he hugs himself with the Frugality of the pitiful pittance of a wretched and niggardly Table every thing goes to wrack and ruin in every Corner of his House in play drink all sorts of profusion making sports in their Junkets with his vain Anger and fruitless Parsimony Every one is a Centinel against him and if by accident any wretched Fellow that serves him is of another humour and will not joyn with the rest he is presently rendred suspected to him a Bait that old Age very easily bites at of its self How oft has this Gentleman boasted to me in how great awe he kept his Family and how exact an Obedience and Reverence they paid him How clearly did this man see into his own Affairs Ille solus nescit omnia I do not know any one that can muster more Parts both natural and acquir'd proper to maintain such a dominion than he yet he is faln from it like a Child For this reason it is that I have pickt out Him amongst several others that I know of the same humour for the greatest Example It were matter sufficient for a Question in the Schools Whether he is better thus or otherwise In his Presence all submit to and bow before him and give so much way to his vanity that no body ever resists him he has his belly full of Cringe and all postures of Fear Submission and Respect Does he turn away a Servant he packs up his bundle and is gone but 't is no further than just out of his sight the Pace of old Age is so slow and the Sence is so weak and troubled that he will live and do his old Office in the same House a year together without being perceiv'd And after a fit interval of time Letters are pretended to come a great way off from I know not where very humble suppliant and full of promises of amendment by vertue of which he is again receiv'd into favour Does Monsieur make any Bargain or send away any Dispatch that does not please 't is supprest and Causes now afterward forg'd to excuse the want of Execution in the one or Answer in the other No strange Letters being first brought to him he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge If by accident they fall first into his own hand being us'd to trust some body to read them to him he reads extempore what he thinks fit and very often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his Letter Finally he sees nothing but by an Image prepar'd and design'd before-hand and the most satisfactory they can invent not to rouze and awake his ill Humour and Choler I have seen enow differing Forms of Oeconomy long constant and of like effect Women especially the perverse and elder sort are evermore addicted to cross their Husbands They lay hold with both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them and the first excuse serves for a plenary Justification I have seen who has grosly purloynd from her Husband that as she told her Confessor she might distribute the more liberal Alms Let who will trust to that Religious Dispensation No management of Affairs seems to them of sufficient Dignity if proceeding from the Husband's assent they must usurp either by Insolence or Cunning and always injuriously or else it has not the Grace of Authority they desire When as in the case I am speaking of 't is against a poor Old man and for the Children than they make use of this Title to serve their Passion with Glory and as in a common Servitude easily monopolize against his Government and Dominion If they be Males grown up and flourishing they presently corrupt either by force or favour both Steward Receivers and all the Rout. Such as have neither Wife nor Son do not so easily fall into this misfortune but withal more cruelly and undeservingly Cato the elder in his time said So many Servants so many Enemies Consider then whether according to the vast difference betwixt the purity of the Age he liv'd in and the corruption of this of ours he does not seem to advertise us that Wife Son and Servant so many Enemies to us 'T is well for old Age that it is always accompanied with Stupidity Ignorance and a facility of being deceiv'd for should we see how we are us'd and would not acquiesce what would become of us especially in such an Age as this where the very Judges who are to determine are usually partial to the young in any Cause that comes before them In case that the discovery of this Cheat escape me I cannot at least fail to discern that I am very fit to be cheated and can a man ever enough speak the value of a Friend in comparison with these civil tyes The very Image of it which I see so pure and uncorrupted in Beasts how religiously do I respect it If others deceive me yet do I not at least deceive my self in thinking I am able to defend me from them or in cudgeling my Brains to make my self so I protect my self from such Treasons in my own Bosom not by an unquiet and tumultuary Curiosity but rather by Mirth and Resolution When I hear talk of any ones Condition I never trouble my self to think of him I presently turn my Eyes upon my self to see in what condition I am what ever concerns another relates to me The Accident that has befaln him gives me Caution rouzes me to turn my Defence that way We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of our selves could we but revert our Observation to our own Concerns as well as extend it to others And several Authors have in this manner prejudic'd their own Cause by running headlong upon those they attack and darting those Shafts against their Enemies that are more properly and with greater advantage to be return'd upon them The last Mareschal de Monlue having lost his Son who was slain at the Isle of Madera in truth a very brave Gentleman and of great expectation did to me amongst his other Regrets very much insist upon what a Sorrow and Heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar and acquainted with him and by that humour of Fatherly Gravity and Sowrness to have lost the opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing his Son as also of letting him know the extream affection he had for him and the worthy opinion he had of his Vertue That poor Boy said he never saw in me other than a stern and disdainful Countenance and is gone in a belief that I neither knew how to love nor esteem him according to his desert For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular Affection I had for him in my Soul Was it not he himself who ought to have
of the World that Fortune to shew us her power in all things and that she takes a pride to abate our Presumption seeing she could not make Fools wise she has made them fortunate in envy of Virtue and does most favour those Executions the Web of which is most purely her own Whence it is that we daily see the simplest amongst us bring to pass great Business both publick and private And as Syrannez the Persian answer'd those who wonder'd that his Affairs succeeded so ill considering that his Deliberations were so wise that he was sole Master of his Designs but that the Success was wholly in the power of Fortune These may answer the same but with a contrary Biass Most worldly Affairs are govern'd and perform'd by her Fata viam inveniunt The Event does often justifie a very foolish Conduct Our interposition is nothing more than as it were a running on by rote and more commonly a Consideration of Custom and Example than of Reason Being astonish'd at the Greatness of the Execution I have formerly been acquainted with their Motives and Address by those who had perform'd it and have found nothing in it but very ordinary Counsels and the most vulgar and useful are also perhaps the most sure and convenient for practice if not for show And what if the plainest Reasons are the best seated the meanest lowest and most beaten more adapted to Affairs To maintain the Authority of the Counsels of Kings 't is not fit that profane Persons should participate of them or see further into them than the outmost Barr. He that will husband his Reputation must be reverenc'd upon Credit and taken all together My Consultation gives the first lines to the Matter and considers it lightly by the first face it presents the stress and main of the Business I have still referr'd to Heaven Permitte divis caetera good and ill Fortune are in my Opinion two Sovereign Powers 'T is Folly to think that humane Prudence can play the part of Fortune and vain is his attempt who presumes to comprehend Causes and Consequences and by the hand to conduct the progress of his design and most especially vain in the Deliberations of War There was never greater Circumspection and Military Prudence than sometimes is seen amongst us can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way that they reserve themselves to the end of the Game I do moreover affirm that our Wisdom it self and wisest Consultations for the most part commit themselves to the Conduct of Chance My Will and my Reason is sometimes mov'd by one Breath and sometimes by another and many of these movements there are that govern themselves without me my Reason has uncertain and casual agitations and impulsions Vertuntur species animorum pectora motus Nunc alios alios dum nubila ventus agebat Concipiunt Their thoughts are chang'd the motions of their mind Inconstant are like Clouds before the Wind. Let a man but observe who are of greatest Authority in Cities and who best do their own business we shall find that they are commonly men of the least Parts Women Children and mad-men have had the fortune to govern great Kingdoms equally well with the wisest Princes and Thucydides says that the stupid more frequently do it than those of better understandings We attribute the effects of their good fortune to their Prudence Vt quisque fortuna utitur Ita praecellet atque exinde sapere illum omnes dicimus Men as they husband their Estates we prize And who are rich are still reputed wise Wherefore I say that in all sorts of Fortune Events are a very poor testimony of our worth and Parts Now I was upon this point that there needs no more but to see a man promoted to Dignity though we knew him but three dayes before a man of no regard yet an image of Grandeur and some extraordinary Parts insensibly steals into our opinion and we persuade our selves that being augmented in Reputation and Attendants he is also increas'd in Merit We judge of him not according to his value but as we do by Counters according to the prerogative of his Place If it happen so that he fall again and be mix'd with the common crowd every one inquires with admiration into the cause of his having been rais'd so high Is it he say they could he make no better provision for himself when he was in place Do Princes satisfie themselves with so little Really we were in good hands This is a thing that I have often seen in my time Nay so much as the very disguises of Grandeurs represented in our Comedies does in some sort move and deceive us That which I my self adore in Kings is the Crowd of their Adorers All Reverence and Submission is due to them except that of the Understanding my Reason is not oblig'd to bow and bend my Knees are Melanthius being ask'd what he thought of the Tragedy of Dionysius I could not see 't said he it was so clouded with Language so the most of those who judge of the Discourses of great men ought to say I did not understand his words he was so clouded with Gravity Majesty and Greatness Antisthenes one day intreated the Athenians to give order that their Asses might as well be employ'd in tilling the ground as the Horses were To which it was answer'd that those Animals were not destin'd for such a service That 's all one reply'd he it only sticks at your command for the most ignorant and incapable men you employ in your Commands of War immediately become worthy enough because you employ them To which the Custom of so many People who Canonize the Kings they have chosen out of their own Body and are not content only to honour but adore them comes very near Those of Mexico after the Ceremonies of his Coronation dare no more presume to look him in the face but as if they had deified him by his Royalty amongst the Oaths they make him take to maintain their Religion and Laws to be valiant just and mild he moreover swears to make the Sun run his Course in his wonted Light to drain the Clouds at a fit Season to confine Rivers within their Channels and to cause all things necessary for his People to be landed upon the Earth I differ from this common fashion and am more apt to suspect his Capacity when I see it accompanied with that grandeur of Fortune and publick Applause We are to consider of what advantage it is to speak when he pleases to chuse the Subject he will speak of to interrupt or change other mens Arguments with a Magisterial Authority to protect himself from the oppositions of others by a nod a smile or silence in the presence of an Assembly that trembles with reverence and respect A man of a prodigious Fortune comming to give his Judgment upon some slight Dispute that was foolishly set on
MICHEL SEIGNEVR DE MONTAIGNE Printed for T. Bassett M. Gilliflower W. Hensman ESSAYS OF MICHAEL SEIGNEUR DE MONTAIGNE IN THREE BOOKS With Marginal Notes and Quotations of the cited Authors And an Account of the Author's LIFE New rendred into English By CHARLES COTTON Esq Viresque acquirit eundo Virg. lib. 4. Aen. The First Volume LONDON Printed for T. Basset at the George in Fleetstreet and M. Gilliflower and W. Hensman in Westminster-Hall 1685. To the Right Honourable GEORGE Marquess Earl and Viscount Hallifax Baron of Eland Lord Privy Seal and one of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy Council MY LORD IF I have set down the only opportunity I ever had of kissing your Lordships Hands amongst the happy Encounters of my Life and take this occasion so many Years after to tell you so your Lordship will not I hope think your self injur'd by such a Declaration from a Man that honours You nor condemn my Ambition when I publish to the World that I am not altogether unknown to You. Your Lordship peradventure may have forgot a Conversation so little worthy your remembrance but the memory of your Lordship's obliging fashion to me all that time can never dye with me and though my Acknowledgment arrives thus late at you I have never left it at home when I went abroad into the best Company My Lord I cannot I would not flatter you I do not think your Lordship capable of being flatter'd neither am I inclin'd to do it to those that are but I cannot forbear to say that I then receiv'd such an impression of your Vertue and Noble Nature as will stay with me for ever This will either excuse the Liberty I presume to take in this Dedication or at least make it no wonder and I am so confident in your Lordships Generosity that I assure my self you will not deny your Protection to a Man whose greatest Publick Crime is that of an ill Writer A better Book if there be a better of the kind in the Original I mean had been a Present more fitly suited to your Lordships Quality and Merit and to my Devotion I could heartily wish it such but as it is I lay it at your Lordship's Feet together with My Lord Your Lordships Most humble and most obedient Servant Charles Cotton THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THE READER MY Design in attempting this Translation was to present my Country with a true Copy of a very brave Original How far I have succeeded in that Design is left to every one to judge and I expect to be the more gently censured for having my self so modest an Opinion of my own Performance as to confess that the Author has suffered by me as well as the former Translator though I hope and dare affirm that the misinterpretations I shall be found guilty of are neither so numerous nor so gross I cannot discern my own Errours it were impardonable in me if I could and did not mend them but I can see his except when we are both mistaken and those I have corrected but am not so ill natur'd as to shew where In truth both Mr. Florio and I are to be excused where we miss of the sence of the Author whose Language is such in many Places as Grammar cannot reconcile which renders it the hardest Book to make a justifiable version of that I yet ever saw in that or any other Language I understand insomuch that though I do think and am pretty confident I understand French as well as many Men I have yet sometimes been forc'd to grope at his meaning Peradventure the greatest Critick would in some Places have found my Author abstruse enough Yet are not these Mistakes I speak of either so many or of so great importance as to cast any scandalous blemish upon the Book but such as few Readers can discover and they that do will I hope easily excuse The Errors of the Press I must in part take upon my self living at so remote a distance from it and supplying it with a slubber'd Copy from an illiterate Amanuensis the last of which is provided against in the Quires that must succeed THE LIFE OF MICHAEL SEIGNEUR DE MONTAIGNE Almost entirely taken out of his own WORKS THE Race of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne in Perigord was Noble but Noble without any great lustre till his time As to Estate he was seiz'd of above two thousand Crowns of yearly Revenue He was born to his Father the third in order of Birth of his Children and by him delivered to Gossips of the meanest Condition to be baptized with a Design rather to oblige and link him to those who were likely to stand in need of him than to such as he might stand in need of He moreover sent him from his Cradle to be brought up in a poor Village of his and there continued him all the while he was at Nurse and longer forming him to the lowest and most common manner of Living Wherein he certainly so well inur'd himself to Frugality and Austerity that they had much ado during all the time of his Infancy especially to correct the refusals he made of things that Children of his age are commonly greedy of as Sugars Sweet-meats March-panes and the like No doubt the Greek and Latin Tongues are a very Fair and a very great Advance but as he himself observes they are now a days too dear bought His Father having made all diligent inquiry that possibly could be amongst the Learned Men for an exquisite method of Education was caution'd of the inconvenience then in Use and told that the tedious time that is employ'd in the Languages of the Ancient Greeks and Romans which cost them nothing is the only reason that we cannot arrive to that grandeur of Soul and perfection of Knowledge that was in them The expedient that he found out for this was that whilst he was at Nurse and before he began to Speak he delivered him to the Care of a German who since died a famous Physician in France totally ignorant of our Language and very well vers'd in the Latin Tongue This Man that he had brought out of his own Country and entertain'd with a very great Salary for this purpose had the Child continually in his Arms to whom there were added two others more moderately Learned to attend him and to Relieve the first which three entertain'd him with no other Language but Latin As to the rest of the Family it was an inviolable Rule that neither his Father nor so much as his Mother Man or Maid spoke any Word in his hearing but such as every one had learn't only to prattle with him And 't is not to be believ'd how all of them profited by this Method his Father and Mother learn't by this means Latin enough to understand and to serve themselves withal at need as also those Servants did who were most about his Person To be short they did Latin it at such a Rate that
would steal aside to make Water as religiously as a Virgin and was as shy to discover either to his Physician or any other whatever those Parts that we are accustomed to conceal and I my self who have so impudent a way of Talking am nevertheless naturally so modest this way that unless at the Importunity of Necessity or Pleasure I very rarely and unwillingly communicate to the Sight of any either those Parts or Actions that Custom orders us to conceal wherein I also suffer more Constraint than I conceive is very well becoming a Man especially of my Profession but he nourish'd this modest Humour to such a degree of Superstition as to give express Orders in his last Will that they should put him on Drawers so soon as he should be dead to which methinks he would have done well to have added that he should have been hood-wink'd too that put them on The Charge that Cyrus left with his Children that neither they nor any other should either see or touch his Body after the Soul was departed from it I attribute to some superstitious Devotion of his both his Historian and Himself amongst other great Qualities having strew'd the whole Course of their Lives with a singular Respect to Religion I was by no means pleas'd with a Story was told me by a Man of very great Quality of a Relation of mine and one who had given a very good Account of himself both in Peace and War that coming to dye in a very old Age of an excessive Pain of the Stone he spent the last Hours of his Life in an extraordinary Solitude about ordering the Ceremony of his Funeral pressing all the Men of Condition who came to see him to engage their Word to attend him to his Grave importuning this very Prince who came to visit him at his last Gasp with a most earnest Supplication that he would order his Family to be assisting there and withall representing before him several Reasons and Examples to prove that it was a Respect due to a Man of his Condition and seem'd to dye content having obtain'd this Promise and appointed the Method and Order of this Funeral Parade I have seldom heard of so long-liv'd a Vanity Another though contrary Solitude of which also I do not want domestick Example seems to be somewhat a Kin to this That a Man shall cudgel his Brains at the last Moments of his Life to contrive his Obsequies to so particular and unusual a Parcimony as to conclude it in the sordid expence of one single Servant with a Candle and Lanthorn And yet I see this Humour commended and the Appointment of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus who forbad his Heirs to bestow upon his Hearse even the common Ceremonies in use upon such Occasions Is it yet Temperance and Frugality to avoid the Expence and Pleasure of which the use and knowledge is imperceptible to us See here an easie and cheap Reformation If Instruction were at all necessary in this case I should be of Opinion that in this as in all other Actions of Life the Ceremony and Expence should be regulated by the Ability of the Person deceas'd and the Philosopher Lycon prudently order'd his Executors to dispose of his Body where they should think most fit and as to his Funerals to order them neither too superfluous nor too mean For my part I should wholly refer the ordering of this Ceremony to Custom and shall when the time comes accordingly leave it to their Discretion to whose Lot it shall fall to do me that last Office Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis non negligendus in nostris The Place of our Sepulture is wholly to be contemn'd by us but not to be neglected by our Friends and it was a holy Saying of a Saint Curatio funeris conditio Sepulturae pompa Exequiarum magis sunt vivorum solatia quà m subsidia mortuorum The Care of Funerals the Place of Sepulture and the Pomps of Exequies are rather Consolations to the Living than any Benefit to the Dead Which made Socrates answer Criton who at the Hour of his Death ask'd him how he would be buried How you will said he If I could concern my self further than the Present about this Affair I should be most tempted as the greatest Satisfaction of this kind to imitate those who in their Life-time entertain themselves with the Ceremony of their own Obsequies before-hand and are pleas'd with viewing their own Monument and beholding their own dead Countenance in Marble Happy are they who can gratifie their Senses by Insensibility and live by their Death I am ready to conceive an implacable Hatred against all Democracy and Popular Government though I cannot but think it the most natural and equitable of all others so oft as I call to mind the inhumane Injustice of the People of Athens who without Remission or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for themselves put to death their brave Captains newly return'd triumphant from a Naval Victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusian Isles the most bloody and obstinate Engagement that ever the Greeks fought at Sea for no other Reason but that they rather followed their Blow and pursued the Advantages prescribed them by the Rule of War than that they would stay to gather up and bury their Dead an Execution that is yet rendred more odious by the Behaviour of Diomedon who being one of the condemn'd and a Man of most eminent both politick and military Vertue after having heard their Sentence advancing to speak no Audience till then having been allowed instead of laying before them his own Innocency or the Impiety of so cruel an Arrest only express'd a Sollitude for his Judges Preservation beseeching the Gods to convert this Sentence to their own Good and praying that for neglecting to pay those Vows which he and his Companions had done which he also acquainted them with in Acknowledgment of so glorious a Success they might not pull down the Indignation of the Gods upon them and so without more Words went couragiously to his Death But Fortune a few Years after punishing them in their kind made them see the Error of their Cruelty for Chabrias Captain-General of their Naval Forces having got the better of Pollis Admiral of Sparta about the Isle of Naxos totally lost the Fruits of his Success and Content with his Victory of very great Importance to their Affairs not to incur the danger of this Example and lose a few Bodies of his dead Friends that were floating in the Sea gave opportunity to a world of living Enemies to sail away in Safety who afterwards made them pay dear for this unseasonable Superstition Quaeris quae jaceas post obitum loco Quae non nata jacent Dost ask where thou shalt lye when dead With those that never Being had This other restores the sense of Repose to a Body without a Soul Neque sepulcrum quo
Nature The continually being accustom'd to any thing blinds the eye of our Judgment Barbarians are no more a wonder to us than we are to them nor with any more reason as every one would confess if after having travell'd over those remote Examples Men could settle themselves to reflect upon and rightly to confer them Humane Reason is a Tincture equally infus'd almost into all our Opinions and Customs of what form soever they are infinite in Matter infinite in Diversity But I return to my Subject There are a People where his Wife and Children excepted no one speaks to the King but through a Trunk In one and the same Nation the Virgins discover those Parts that Modesty should perswade them to hide and the married Women carefully cover and conceal To which this Custom in another Place has some Relation where Chastity but in Marriage is of no Esteem for unmarried Women may prostitute themselves to as many as they please and being got with Child may lawfully take Physick in the sight of every one to destroy their Fruit. And in another Place if a Tradesman marry all of the same Condition who are invited to the Wedding lye with the Bride before him and the greater number of them there is the greater is her Honour and the Opinion of her Ability and Strength if an Officer marry 't is the same the same with a Nobleman and so of the rest excepting it be a Labourer or one of mean Condition for then it belongs to the Lord of the Place to perform that Office and yet a severe Loyalty during Marriage is afterward strictly enjoyn'd There is a place where Bawdy-houses of Young-men are kept for the Pleasure of Women as we know there are of Women for the Necessities of Men and also Marriages where the Wives go to War as well as the Husbands and not only share in the dangers of Battel but moreover in the Honours of Command Others where they wear Rings not only through their Noses Lips Cheeks and on their Toes but also weighty Gymmals of Gold thrust through their Paps and Buttocks Where in eating they wipe their Fingers upon their Thighs Genitories and the Soles of their Feet Where Children are excluded and Brothers and Nephews only inherit and elsewhere Nephews only saving in the Royal Family and the Succession of the Crown where for the Regulation of Community in Goods and Estates observ'd in the Country certain Sovereign Magistrates have committed to them the universal Charge and over-seeing of the Agriculture and Distribution of the Fruits according to the Necessity of every one Where they lament the Death of Children and Feast at the Decease of old Men Where they lye ten or twelve in a Bed Men and their Wives together Where Women whose Husbands come to violent Ends may marry again and others not Where the servile Condition of Women is look'd upon with such Contempt that they kill all the native Females and buy Wives of their Neighbours to supply their Use Where Husbands may repudiate their Wives without shewing any Cause but Wives cannot part from their Husbands for what cause soever Where Husbands may sell their Wives in case of sterility Where they boyl the Bodies of their dead and afterwards pound them to a pulp which they mix with their Wine and drink it Where the most coveted Sepulture is to be eaten with Dogs and elsewhere by Birds Where they believe the Souls of the happy live in all manner of Liberty in delightful Fields furnish'd with all sorts of Delicacies and that it is those Souls repeating the words we utter which we call Eccho Where they fight in the Water and shoot their Arrows with the most mortal Aim swimming Where for a sign of Subjection they lift up their Shoulders and hang down their Heads and put off their shooes when they enter the King's Palace Where the Eunuchs who take charge of the Religious Women have moreover their Lips and Noses cut away and disguis'd that they may not be lov'd and the Priests put out their own Eyes to be better acquainted with their Daemons and the better to receive and retain their Oracles Where every one creates to himself a Deity of what he likes best according to his own Fancy the Hunter a Lyon or a Fox the Fisher some certain Fish and Idols of every Humane Action or Passion in which place the Sun the Moon and the Earth are the principal Deities and the form of taking an Oath is to touch the Earth looking up to Heaven and there both Flesh and Fish is eaten raw Where the greatest Oath they take is to swear by the Name of some dead Person of Reputation laying their hand upon his Tomb Where the New-years Gift the King sends every Year to the Princes his Subjects is Fire which being brought all the old Fire is put out and the neighbouring People are bound to fetch of the new every one for themselves upon pain of Treason Where when the King to betake himself wholly to Devotion retires from his Administration which often falls out his next Successor is oblig'd to do the same by which means the Right of the Kingdom devolves to the third in Succession Where they vary the Form of Government according to the seeming necessity of Affairs Depose the King when they think good substituting ancient men to govern in his stead and sometimes transferring it into the hands of the Common-People Where Men and Women are both Circumciz'd and also Baptiz'd Where the Souldier who in one or several Engagements has been so fortunate as to present seven of the Enemies Heads to the King is made noble where they live in that rare and singular Opinion of the Mortality of the Soul Where the Women are deliver'd without Pain or Fear Where the Women wear Copper Fetters upon both their Legs and if a Louse bite them are bound in Magnanimity to bite them again and dare not marry till first they have made their King a Tender of their Virginity if he please to accept it Where the ordinary way of Salutation is by putting a Finger down to the Earth and then pointing it up towards Heaven Where Men carry Burthens upon their Heads and Women on their Shoulders the Women pissing standing and the Men cowring down Where they send their Blood in token of Friendship and unsee the men they would nour like Gods Where not only to the fourth but in any other remote Degree Kindred are not permitted to marry Where the Children are four Years at Nurse and sometimes twelve in which Place also it is accounted mortal to give the Child suck the first day after it is born Where the Correction of the male Children is peculiarly design'd to the Fathers and to the Mothers of the Females the Punishment being to hang them by the Heels in the Smoak Where they eat all sorts of Herbs without other Scruple than of the Illness of the Smell Where all things are open the finest
does not follow it and sees Knowledge but makes no use of it Plato's principal Institution in his Republick is to fit his Citizens with Employments suitable to their Nature Nature can do all and does all Cripples are very unfit for Exercises of the Body and lame Souls for Exercises of the Mind Degenerate and vulgar Souls are unworthy of Philosophy If we see a Shooe-maker with his Shooes out at the Toes we say 't is no wonder for commonly none go worse shod than their Wives and they In like manner Experience does often present us a Physician worse physick'd a Divine worse reform'd and frequently a Scholar of less Sufficiency than another Aristo of Chios had anciently Reason to say That Philosophers did their Auditories harm forasmuch as most of the Souls of those that heard them were not capable of making benefit of their Instructions and if they did not apply them to good would certainly apply them to ill 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex Aristippi acerbos ex Zenonis Schola exire They proceeded effeminate Prodigals from the School of Aristippus and Churles and Cynicks from that of Zeno. In that excellent Institution that Xenophon attributes to the Persians we find that they taught their Children Vertue as other Nations do Letters Plato tells us that the eldest Son in their Royal Succession was thus brought up So soon as he was born he was deliver'd not to Women but to Eunuchs of the greatest Authority about their Kings for their Vertue whose Charge it was to keep his Body healthful and in good plight and after he came to seven Years of Age to teach him to ride and to go a Hunting when he arriv'd at fourteen he was transferr'd into the hands of four the wisest the most just the most temperate and most valiant of the Nation of which the first was to instruct him in Religion the second to be always upright and sincere the third to conquer his Appetites and Desires and the fourth to despise all Danger 'T is a thing worthy of very great Consideration that in that excellent and in truth for its Perfection prodigious form and civil Regiment set down by Lycurgus though so sollicitous of the Education of Children as a thing of the greatest Concern and even in the very Seat of the Muses he should make so little mention of Learning as if their generous Youth disdaining all other Subjection but that of Vertue only ought to be supply'd instead of Tutors to read to them Arts and Sciences with such Masters as should only instruct them in Valour Prudence and Justice An Example that Plato has followed in his Laws the manner of whose Discipline was to propound to them Questions upon the Judgments of Men and of their Actions and if they commended or condemned this or that Person or Fact they were to give a Reason for so doing by which means they at once sharp'ned their Understanding and became skillful in the Laws Mandane in Xenophon asking her Son Cyrus how he would do to learn Justice and the other Vertues amongst the Medes having left all his Masters behind him in Persia He made Answer That he had learn'd those things long since that his Master had often made him a Judge of the Differences amongst his School-Fellows and had one day whip'd him for giving a wrong Sentence and thus it was A great Boy in the School having a little short Cassock by force took a longer from another that was not so tall as he and gave him his own in exchange whereupon I being appointed Judge of the Controversie gave Judgment That I thought it best either of them should keep the Coat he had for that they both of them were better fitted with that of one another than with their own upon which my Master told me I had done ill in that I had only consider'd the Fitness and Decency of the Garments whereas I ought to have consider'd the Justice of the thing which requires that no one should have any thing forcibly taken from him that is his own But it seems poor Cyrus was whip'd for his Pains as we are in our Villages for forgetting the first Aoriste of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Pedant must make me a very learned Oration in genere demonstrativo before he can perswade me that his School is like unto that They knew how to go the readiest way to work and seeing that Science when most rightly apply'd and best understood can do no more but teach us Prudence moral Honesty and Resolution they thought fit to initiate their Children with the knowledge of Effects and to instruct them not by Hear-say and by Rote but by the Experiment of Action in lively forming and moulding them not only by Words and Precepts but chiefly Works and Examples to the end it might not be a Knowledge of the Mind only but a Complexion and a Habit and not an Acquisition but a natural Possession One asking to this Purpose Agesilaus what he thought most proper for Boys to learn What they ought to do when they come to be Men said he It is therefore no wonder if such an Institution have produc'd so admirable Effects They us'd to go 't is said in the other Cities of Greece to enquire out Rhetoricians Painters and Musick-Masters but in Lacedaemon Legislators Magistrates and Generals of Armies at Athens they learnt to speak well and here to do well there to disengage themselves from a Sophistical Argument and to unravel Syllogisms here to evade the Baits and Allurements of Pleasure and with a noble Courage and Resolution to confute and conquer the menaces of Fortune and Death those cudgell'd their Brains about Words these made it their Business to enquire into things there was an eternal Babble of the Tongue here a continual Exercise of the Soul And therefore it is nothing strange if when Antipater demanded of them fifty Children for Hostages they made Answer quite contrary to what we should do That they would rather give him twice as many full grown Men so much did they value the loss of their Country's Education When Agesilaus courted Xenophon to send his Children to Sparta to be bred it is not said he there to learn Logick or Rhetorick but to be instructed in the noblest of all Sciences namely the Science to Obey and to Command It is very pleasant to see Socrates after his manner rallying Hippias who recounts to him what a World of Money he has got especially in certain little Villages of Sicily by teaching School and that he got never a Penny at Sparta What a sottish and stupid People says Socrates are they without Sense or Understanding that make no Account either of Grammars or Poetry and only busie themselves in studying the Genealogies and Successions of their Kings the Foundations Rises and Declensions of States and such Tales of a Tub After which having made Hippias particularly to acknowledge the Excellency of their Form of Publick Administration and the
Precipice and so wholly cut off from the rest of the Work that by the six first words I found my self flying into the other World and from thence discover'd the Vale from whence I came so deep and low that I had never since the Heart to descend into it any more If I should set out my Discourses with such rich Spoils as these the Plagiary would be too manifest in his own Defects and I should too much discover the imperfection of my own Writing To reprehend the fault in others that I am guilty of my self appears to me no more unreasonable than to condemn as I often do those of others in my self They are to be every where reprov'd and ought to have no Sanctuary allow'd them I know very well how imprudently I my self at every turn attempt to equal my self to my thefts and to make my style go hand in hand with them not without a temerarious hopes of deceiving the eyes of my Reader from discerning the difference but withall it is as much by the benefit of my Application that I hope to do it as by that of my Invention or any Force of my own Besides I do not offer to contend with the whole Body of these Champions nor hand to hand to any one of them 't is only by slights and little light attempts that I engage them I do not grapple with them but try their strength only and never engage so far as I make a shew to do and if I could hold them in play I were a brave Fellow for I never attaque them but where they are most sinewy and strong To cover a man's self as I have seen some do with another man's Arms so as not to discover so much as their fingers ends to carry on a Design as it is not hard for a Man that has any thing of a Scholar in him in an ordinary Subject to do under old Inventions patcht up here and there with his own Trumpery and then to endeavour to conceal the theft and to make it pass for his own is first injustice and meanness of Spirit in whoever do it who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a Reputation endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon the World in their own Name which they have really no manner of title to and then a ridiculous Folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorant approbation of the Vulgar by such a pitiful Cheat at the price at the same time of discovering their insufficiency to men of Understanding who will soon smell out and trace them in those borrow'd Allegories and from whom alone they are to expect a legitimate Applause For my own part there is nothing I would not sooner do than that neither have I said so much of others but to get a better Opportunity to excuse my self neither in this do I in the least glance at the Composers of Canto's who declare themselves for such of which sort of Writers I have in my time known many very ingenious and have their Rhapsodies in very great Esteem and particularly one under the Name of Capilulus besides the Ancients These are really Men of Wit and that make it appear they are so both by that and other ways of Writing as for Example Lipsius in that learned and laborious Contexture of his Politicks But be it how it will and how inconsiderable soever these Essays of mine may be I will ingeniously confess I never intended to conceal them no more than my old bald grizled Picture before them where the Graver has not presented you with a perfect Face but the Resemblance of mine And these also are but my own particular Opinions and Fancies and I deliver them for no other but only what I my self believe and not for what is really to be believ'd Neither have I any other end in this Writing but only to discover my self who also shall peradventure be another thing to morrow if I chance to meet any Book or Friend to convince me in the mean time I have no Authority to be believ'd neither do I desire it being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others A Friend of mine then having read the precedent Chapter the other day told me that I should a little longer have insisted upon the Education of Children and farther have extended my Discourse upon so necessary a point which how fit I am to do let my Friends flatter me if they please I have in the mean time no such Opinion of my own Talent as to promise my self any very good success from my endeavour but Madam if I had any sufficiency in this Subject I could not possibly better employ it than to present my best Instructions to the little Gentleman that threatens you shortly with a happy Birth for you are too generous to begin otherwise than with a male for having had so great a hand in the treaty of your Marriage I have a certain particular right and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the Issue that shall spring from it besides that your having had the best of my Services so long in possession does sufficiently oblige me to desire the Honour and Advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned But in truth all I understand as to that particular is only this that the greatest and most important difficulty of Humane Science is the Education of Children For as in Agriculture the Husbandry that is to precede Planting as also planting it self is certain plain easie and very well known but after that which is planted comes to take root to spread and shoot up there is a great deal more to be done more Art to be us'd more care to be taken and much more difficulty to cultivate and bring them to Perfection so it is with Men it is no hard matter to get Children but after they are born then begins the Trouble Sollicitude and Care vertuously to train Principle and bring them up The Symptoms of their Inclinations in that young and tender Age are so obscure and the Promises so uncertain and fallacious that it is very hard to establish any solid Judgment or Conjecture upon them As Simon for Example and Themistocles and a thousand others who have very much deceiv'd the little Expectation the World had of them Cubs of Bears and Bitches Puppies do truly and indeed discover their natural Inclination but Men so soon as ever grown up immediately applying themselves to certain Habits engaging themselves in certain Opinions and conforming themselves to particular Laws and Customs do easily alter or at least disguise their true and real Disposition And yet it is hard to force the Propension of Nature whence it comes to pass that for not having chosen the right Course a Man often takes very great Pains and consumes a good part of his Age in training up Children to things for which by their natural Aversion they are totally unfit In this
Estimate and Grandeur This great World which some do yet multiply as several Species under one Genus is the Mirror wherein we are to behold our selves to be able to know our selves as we ought to do In short I would have this to be the Book my young Gentleman should study with the most Attention for so many Humours so many Sects so many Judgments Opinions Laws and Customs teach us to judge aright of our own and inform our Understandings to discover their Imperfection and natural Infirmity which is no trivial Speculation So many Mutations of States and Kingdoms and so many Turns and Revolutions of publick Fortune will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own So many great Names so many famous Victories and Conquests drown'd and swallow'd in Oblivion render our Hopes ridiculous of eternizing our Names by the taking of half a score light Horse or a paltry Turret which only derives its Memory from its Ruine The Pride and Arrogancy of so many foreign Pomps and Ceremonies the tumorous Majesty of so many Courts and Grandeurs accustom and fortifie our Sight without Astonishment to behold and endure the lustre of our own So many millions of men buried before us encourage us not to fear to go seek so good Company in the other World and so of all the rest Pythagoras was wont to say That our Life retires to the great and populous Assembly of the Olympick Games wherein some exercise the Body that they may carry away the Glory of the Prize in those Contentions and others carry Merchandise to sell for Profit There are also some and those none of the worst sort who pursue no other Advantage than only to look on and consider how and why every thing is done and to be unactive Spectators of the Lives of other men thereby the better to judge of and to regulate their own and indeed from Examples all the Instruction couch'd in Philosophical Discourses may naturally flow to which all humane Actions as to their best Rule ought to be especially directed where a Man shall be taught to know Quid fas optare quid asper Vtile nummus habet patriae charisque propinquis Quantum elargiri deceat quem te Deus esse Jussit humana qua parte locatus es in re Quid sumus aut quidnam victuri gignimur What he may wish what 's Money 's natural use What to be liberal is and what profuse What God commands an honest Man should be And here on Earth to know in what Degree That God has plac'd thee what we are and why He gave us Being and Humanity What it is to know and what to be ignorant what ought to be the End and Design of Study what Valour Temperance and Justice are the difference betwixt Ambition and Avarice Servitude and Subjection License and Liberty by what Token a man may know the true and solid Contentation how far Death Affliction and Disgrace are to be apprehended Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem And which way every one may know Labour t' avoid or undergo By what secret Springs we move and the Reason of our various Agitations and Irresolutions for methinks the first Doctrine with which one should season his Understanding ought to be that which regulates his Manners and his Sense that teaches him to know himself and how both well to dye and well to live Amongst the Liberal Sciences let us begin with that that makes us free not that they do not all serve in some measure to the Instruction and Use of Life as all other things in some sort also do but let us make choice of that which directly and profess'dly serves to that end If we are once able to restrain the Offices of Humane Life within their just and natural Limits we shall find that most of the Sciences in use are of no great use to us and even in those that are that there are many very unnecessary Cavities and Dilatations which we were better to let alone and following Socrates his Direction limit the Course of our Studies to those things only where a true and real Utility and Advantage are to be expected and found Sapere aude Incipe Vivendi qui recté prorogat Horam Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis at ille Labitur labetur in omne volubilis Ovum Dare to be wise begin who to their wrong The Hour of living well deferr too long Like Rustick Fools sit with a patient Eye Expecting when the murm'ring Brook runs dry Whose Springs can never fail 'till the last Fire Lick up the Ocean and the World expire 'T is a great foolery to teach our Children Quid moveant Piscis animosaque signa Leonis Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua What influence Pisces have o're what the ray Of angry Leo bears the greatest sway Or Capricornus Province who still laves His threatning Fore-head in the Hesperian Waves the Knowledge of the Stars and the Motion of the eighth Sphere before their own 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How swift the seven Sisters Motions are Or the dull Churls how slow what need I care Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras To what purpose said he should I trouble my self in searching out the Secrets of the Stars having Death or Slavery continually before my Eyes For the Kings of Persia were at that time preparing to invade his Country Every one ought to say the same Being assaulted as I am by Ambition Avarice Temerity and Superstition and having within so many other Enemies of Life shall I go cudgel my Brains about the Worlds Revolutions After having taught him what will make him more wise and good you may then entertain him with the Elements of Logick Physick Geometry and Rhetorick and the Science which he shall then himself most incline to his Judgment being before-hand form'd and fit to choose he will quickly make his own The Way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by Discourse and sometimes by reading sometimes his Governour shall put the Author himself which he shall think most proper for him into his Hands and sometimes only the Marrow and Substance of it and if himself be not conversant enough in Books to turn to all the fine Discourses the Book contains there may some Man of Learning be joyn'd to him that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he desires and stands in need of to recommend to his Pupil And who can doubt but that this way of teaching is much more easie and natural than that of Gaza In which the precepts are so intricate and so harsh and the Words so vain lean and insignificant that there is no hold to be taken of them nothing that quickens and elevates the Wit and Fancy whereas here the Mind has what to feed upon and to digest this Fruit therefore is not only without comparison much more fair and beautiful but will also
true Narrative of some noble Expedition or some wise and learned Discourse who at the Beat of Drum that excites the youthful Ardour of his Companions leaves that to follow another that calls to a Morrice or the Bears and who would not wish and find it more delightful and more pleasing to return all Dust and Sweat victorious from a Battel than from Tennis or from a Ball with the Prize of those Exercises I see no other Remedy but that he be bound Prentice in some good Town to learn to make minc'd Pyes though he were the Son of a Duke according to Plato's Precept That Children are to be plac'd out and dispos'd of not according to the Wealth Qualities or Condition of the Father but according to the Faculties and the Capacity of their own Soul But since Philosophy is that which instructs us to live and that Infancy has there its Lessons as well as other Ages why is it not communicated to Children betimes And why are they not more early initiated in it Vdum molle lutum est nunc nunc properandus acri Fingendus sine fine rota The Clay is moist and soft now now make haste And form the Pitcher for the Wheel turns fast They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living A hundred Students have got the Pox before they have come to read Aristotle's Lecture of Temperance Cicero said That though he should live two mens Ages he should never find leisure to study the Lyrick Poets and I find these Sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable The Boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare he owes but the first fifteen or sixteen Years of his Life to Discipline the Remainder is due to Action let us therefore employ that short time in necessary Instruction Away with the Logical Subtilties they are Abuses things by which our Lives can never be amended take me the plain Philosophical Discourses learn first how rightly to choose and then rightly to apply them they are more easie to be understood than one of Bocace his Novels a Child from Nurse is much more capable of them than of learning to read or to write Philosophy has Discourses equally proper for Childhood as for the decrepid Age of Men and I am of Plutarch's mind that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great Disciple with the Knack of forming Syllogisms or with the Elements of Geometry as with infusing into him good Precepts concerning Valour Prowess Magnanimity Temperance and the Contempt of Fear and with this Ammunition sent him whilst yet a Boy with no more than 30000 Foot 4000 Horse and but 42000 Crowns to subjugate the Empire of the whole Earth For the other Arts and Sciences Alexander says he highly indeed commended their Excellency and Quaintness and had them in very great Honour and Esteem but not ravish'd with them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the Practice of them in his own Person Petite hinc juvenesque senesque Finem animo certum miserique viatica canis Young men and old from hence your selves befriend For both your Minds with some sure aim and end And both therein against the time to come Wretched old Age get a Viaticum Epicurus in the beginning of his Letter to Meniceus says That neither the youngest should refuse to Philosophize nor the eldest grow weary of it and who does otherwise seems tacitely to imply that either the time of living happily is not yet come or that it is already past and yet for all that I would not have this Pupil of ours imprison'd and made a Slave to his Book nor would I have him given up to the Morosity and melancholick Humour of a sowre ill-natur'd Pedant I would not have his Spirit cow'd and subdu'd by applying him to the Rack and tormenting him as some do 14 or 15 Hours a day and so make a Pack-Horse of him Neither should I think it good when by reason of a solitary and melancholick Complexion he is discover'd to be much addicted to his Book to nourish that Humour in him for that renders them unfit for Civil Conversation and diverts them from better Employments And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an immoderate Thirst after Knowledge Carneades was so besotted with it that he would not find time so much as to comb his Head or to pare his Nails neither would I have his generous Manners spoil'd and corrupted by the Incivility and Barbarity of those of another The French Wisdom has anciently been turn'd into Proverb Early but of no Continuance and in truth we yet see that nothing can be more ingenious and pretty than the Children of France but they ordinarily deceive the Hope and Expectation hath been conceiv'd of them and grown up to be men have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of I have heard men of good Understanding say these Colledges of ours to which we send our young People and of which we have but too many make them such Animals as they are But to our little Monsieur a Closet a Garden the Table his Bed Solitude and Company Morning and Evening all Hours shall be the same and all Places to him a Study for Philosophy who as the Formatrix of Judgment and Manners shall be his principal Lesson has that priviledge to have a hand in every thing The Orator Isocrates being at a Feast intreated to speak of his Art all the Company were satisfied with and commended his Answer It is not now a time said he to do what I can do and that which it is now time to do I cannot do For to make Orations and Rhetorical Disputes in a Company met together to laugh and make good cheer had been very unseasonable and improper and as much might have been said of all the other Sciences But as to what concerns Philosophy that part of it at least that treats of Man and of his Offices and Duties it has been the joynt Opinion of all wise men that out of respect to the sweetness of her Conversation she is ever to be admitted in all Sports and Entertainments And Plato having invited her to his Feast we shall see after how gentle and obliging a manner accommodated both to Time and Place she entertain'd the Company though in a Discourse of the highest and most important nature Aequè pauperibus prodest locupletibus aequè Et neglecta aequè pueris senibusque nocebit It profits poor and rich alike but when Neglected t' old and young as hurtful then By which method of Instruction my young Pupil will be much more and better employ'd than those of the Colledge are but as the steps we take in walking to and fro in a Gallery though three times as many do not tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal Journey so our Lesson as it were accidentally occurring without any set obligation of Time or Place and
of the Supream Magistrate himself And I for my part should think it reasonable that the Prince should sometimes gratifie his People at his own Expence and that in great and populous Cities there might be Theatres erected for such Entertainments if but to divert them from worse and more private Actions But to return to my Subject there is nothing like alluring the Appetite and Affection otherwise you make nothing but so many Asses loaden with Books and by vertue of the Lash give them their Pocket full of Learning to keep whereas to do well you should not only lodge it with them but make them to espouse it CHAP. XXVI That it is Folly to measure Truth and Error by our own Capacity 'T IS not perhaps without reason that we attribute Facility of Belief and Easiness of Perswasion to Simplicity and Ignorance and I have heard the Belief compar'd to the Impression of a Seal stamp'd upon the Soul which by how much softer and of less resistance it is is the more easie to be impos'd upon Vt necesse est lancem in libra ponderibus impositis de primis sic animum perspicuis cedere As the Scale of the Ballance must give way to the Weight that presses it down so the Mind must of necessity yield to Demonstration and by how much the Soul is more empty and without Counterpoise with so much greater Facility it dips under the weight of the first Perswasion And this is the reason that Children the common People Women and sick Folks are most apt to be led by the Ears But then on the other side 't is a very great Presumption to slight and condemn all things for false that do not appear to us likely to be true which is the ordinary Vice of such as fancy themselves wiser than their Neighbours I was my self once one of those and if I heard talk of dead Folks walking of Prophecies Enchantments Witchcrafts or any other Story I had no mind to believe Somnia terrores magicos miracula sagas Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala Dreams Magick Terrors Wonders Sorceries Hob-goblins or Thessalian Prodigies I presently pittied the poor People that were abus'd by these Follies whereas I now find that I my self was to be pittied as much at least as they not that Experience has taught me any thing to convince my former Opinion tho my Curiosity has endeavoured that way but Reason has instructed me that thus resolutely to condemn any thing for false and impossible is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the Will of God and the Power of Nature within the Bounds of my own Capacity than which no Folly can be greater If we give the Names of Monster and Miracle to every thing our Reason cannot comprehend how many are continually presented before our Eyes Let us but consider through what Clouds and as it were groping in the Dark our Teachers lead us to the Knowledge of most of the things we apply our Studies to and we shall find that it is rather Custom than Knowledge that takes away the Wonder and renders them easie and familiar to us Jam nemo cessus saturusque videndi Suspicere in Coeli dignatur lucida Templa Already glutted with the Sight now none Heaven's lucid Temples deigns to look upon And that if those things were now newly presented to us we should think them as strange and incredible if not more than any others Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint Ex improviso seu sint objecta repentè Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici Aut minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes Where things are suddenly and by surprize Just now objected new to mortal Eyes At nothing could they be astonish'd more Nor less than what they so admir'd before He that had never seen a River imagin'd the first he met with to be the Sea and the greatest things that have fall'n within our Knowledge we conclude the Extreams that Nature makes of the kind Scilicet fluvius qui non est maximus ei est Qui non ante aliquem majorem videt ingens Arbor homoque videtur omnia de genere omni Maxime quae vidit quisque haec ingentia fingit A little River unto him does seem That bigger never saw a mighty Stream A Tree a Man any thing seems to his view O' th' kind the greatest that ne're greater knew Consuetudine Oculorum assuescunt Animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident Things grow familiar to Mens Minds by being often seen so that they neither admire nor are inquisitive into things they daily see The Novelty rather than the greatness of things tempts us to enquire into their Causes But we are to judge with more reverence and with greater Acknowledgment of our own Ignorance and Infirmity of this infinite Power of Nature How many unlikely things are there testified by People of very good Repute which if we cannot persuade our selves absolutely to believe we ought at least to leave them in Suspence for to conclude them impossible is by a temerarious Presumption to pretend to know the utmost Bounds of Possibility Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt impossible betwixt extraordinary and what is contrary to the common Opinion of Men in believing rashly and on the other side in being not too incredulous we should then observe the Rule of Ne quid nimis enjoyn'd by Chilo When we find in Froissard that the Count de Foix knew in Bearn the defeat of John King of Castile at Juberoth the next day after and the means by which he tells us he came to do so we may be allow'd to be a little merry at it as also at what our Annals report that Pope Honorius the same day that King Phillip Augustus died at Mant performed his publick Obsequies at Rome and commanded the like throughout all Italy the Testimony of these Authors not being perhaps of Authority enough to restrain us But what if Plutarch besides several Examples that he produces out of Antiquity tells us he is assur'd by certain Knowledge that in the time of Domitian the News of the Battel lost by Antonius in Germany was publish'd at Rome many dayes Journey from thence and dispers'd throughout the whole World the same Day it was fought and if Caesar was of Opinion that it has often happened that the report has preceded the accident shall we not say that these simple People have suffered themselves to be deceived with the Vulgar for not having been so clear sighted as we Is there any thing more delicate more clear more spritely than Pliny's Judgment when he is pleased to set it to work Any thing more remote from vanity Setting aside his Learning of which I make less account in which of these do any of us excell him And yet there is scarce a Puisne Sophister that does not convince him of untruth and that
of such a one that 't is much if Fortune bring it but once to pass in three Ages There is nothing to which Nature seems so much to have enclin'd us as to Society and Aristotle says that the good Legislators had more respect to Friendship than to Justice Now the most supream point of its perfection in this for generally all those that Pleasure Profit Publick or Private Interest Create and Nourish are so much the less Generous and so much the less Friendships by how much they mix another cause and design than simple and pure Friendship it self Neither do the four Ancient Kinds Natural Sociable Hospitable and Venerian either separately or jointly make up a true and perfect Friendship That of Children to Parents is rather respect Friendship being nourisht by Communication which cannot by reason of the great disparity be betwixt them but would rather perhaps violate the duties of Nature for neither are all the secret thoughts of Fathers fit to be communicated to Children lest it beget an indecent familiarity betwixt them neither can the advices and reproofs which is one of the principal offices of Friendship be properly perform'd by the Son to the Father There are some Countries where 't is the Custom for Children to kill their Fathers and others where the Fathers kill'd their Children to avoid being sometimes an impediment to one another in their designs and moreover the expectation of the one does naturally depend upon the ruine of the other There have been great Philosophers who have made nothing of this tie of Nature as Aristippus for one who being prest home about the affection he ow'd to his Children as being come out of him presently fell to spit saying that that also came out of him and that he did also breed Worms and Lice and that other that Plutarch endeavoured to reconcile to his Brother I make never the more account of him said he for coming out of the same hole This name of Brother does indeed carry with it an amicable and affectionate sound and for that reason he and I call'd Brothers but the complication of Interest the division of Estates and that the raising of the one should be the undoing of the other does strangely unnerve and slacken this fraternal tie And Brothers pursuing their Fortune and Advancement by the same Path 't is hardly possible but they must of necessity often justle and hinder one another Besides why is it necessary that the correspondence of Manners Parts and Inclinations which beget these true and perfect Friendships should always meet and concur in these relations The Father and the Son may be of quite contrary humours and Brothers without any manner of Sympathy in their Natures He is my Son he is my Brother or he and I are Cousin-germans but he is Passionate ill Natur'd or a Fool. And moreoever by how much these are Friendships that the Law and Natural Obligation impose upon us so much less is there of our own choice and voluntary freedom Whereas that voluntary liberty of ours has nothing but that of Affection and Friendship properly its own Not that I have not in my own person experimented all can possibly be expected of that kind having had the best and most indulgent Father even to an extream old Age that ever was and who was himself descended from a Family for many Generations Famous and Exemplary for Brotherly Concord Et ipse Notus in fratres animi Paterni And he himself noted the rest above Towards his Brothers for paternal Love We are not here to bring the Love we bear to Women though it be an Act of our own Choice into comparison nor rank it with the others the Fire of which I confess Neque enim est Dea nescia nostri Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem Nor is my Goddess ign'rant what I am Who pleasing Sorrows mixes with my Flame is more active more eager and more sharp but withal 't is more precipitous fickle moving and inconstant a Feaver subject to Intermission and Paroxisms that has seized but on one part one corner of the Building whereas in Friendship 't is a general and universal Fire but temperate and equal a constant establisht heat all easie and smooth without poynancy or roughness Moreover in Love 't is no other than Frantick Desire to that which flies from us Come segue la lepre ill cacciatore Al freddo al caldo alla montagna al litto Ne piu l'estima poi che presa vede Et sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede Like Hunters that the flying Hare pursue O're Hill and Dale through Heat Morning Dew Which being ta'ne the Quarry they despise Being only pleas'd in following that which flies So soon as ever they enter into terms of Friendship that is to say into a concurrence of Desires it vanishes and is gone fruition destroys it as having only a fleshly end and such a one as is subject to Satiety Friendship on the contrary is enjoy'd proportionably as it is desir'd and only grows up is nourisht and improves by enjoyment as being of it self Spiritual and the Soul growing still more perfect by practice Under and subsellious to this perfect Friendship I cannot deny but that the other vain Affections have in my younger Years found some place in my thoughts that I may say nothing of him who himself confesses but too much in his Verses So that I had both these Passions but always so that I could my self well enough distinguish them and never in any degree of comparison with one another The first maintaining its flight in so lofty and so brave a place as with disdain to look down and see the other flying at a far humbler pitch below As concerning Marriage besides that it is a Covenant the entrance into which is only free but the continuance in it forc'd and compell'd having another dependance than that of our own Free-will and a Bargain commonly contracted to other ends there almost always happens a Thousand Intricacies in it to unravel enough to break the Thred and to divert the Current of a Lively Affection whereas Friendship has no manner of Business or Traffick with any but it self Moreover to say truth the ordinary Talent of Women is not such as is sufficient to maintain the Conference and Communication required to the support of this Conjugal Tie nor do they appear to be endu'd with Constancy of Mind to endure the pinch of so hard and durable a Knot And doubtless if without this there could be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted where not only the Souls might have this entire fruition but the Bodies also might share in the Alliance and a Man be engag'd throughout the Friendship would certainly be more full and perfect but it is without example that this Sex could ever arrive at such perfection and by the Ancient Schools is wholy rejected as also that other Grecian Licence is justly
Spritely and to him to whose Pallat Fish were more acceptable than Flesh it would be no proper nor sanative Receipt no more than in the other sort of Physick where the Drugs have no effect upon him who swallows them with Appetite and Pleasure The Bitterness of the Potion and the Abhorrency of the Patient are necessary Circumstances to the Operation The Nature that would eat Rhubarb like Butter'd Turnips would frustrate the use and vertue of it it must be something to trouble and disturb the Stomach that must Purge and Cure it and here the common Rule that things are Cur'd by their contraries fails for in this one ill is Cur'd by another This Belief a little resembles that other so Ancient one of thinking to Gratifie the Gods and Nature by Self-Murther an Opinion universally once receiv'd in all Religions and to this Day retain'd in some For in these later times wherein our Fathers Liv'd Amurath at the taking of Istmus Immolated Six Hundred Young Greeks to his Fathers Soul in the nature of a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Sins of the Deceased And in those new Countries discover'd in this Age of ours which are pure and Virgins yet in comparison of ours this practice is in some measure every where receiv'd All their Idols reek with Humane Blood not without various Examples of Horrid Cruelty Some they Burn alive and half Broil'd take them off the Coals to tear out their Hearts and Entrails others even Women they fley alive and with their Bloody Skins Clothe and Disguise others Neither are we without great Examples of Constancy and Resolution in this Affair The poor Souls that are to be Sacrific'd Old Men Women and Children going some Days before to beg Alms for the Offering of their Sacrifice and so Singing and Dancing present themselves to the Slaughter The Ambassadors of the King of Mexico setting out to Fernando Cortez the Power and Greatness of their Master after having told him that he had Thirty Vassals of which each was able to Raise an Hundred Thousand Fighting Men and that he kept his Court in the fairest and best Fortified City under the Sun added at last that he was oblig'd Yearly to offer to the Gods Fifty Thousand Men. And it is confidently affirm'd that he maintain'd a continual War with some Potent Neighbouring Nations not only to keep the Young Men in Exercise but principally to have wherewithal to furnish his Sacrifices with his Prisoners of War At a certain Town in another place for the welcome of the said Cortez they Sacrificed Fifty Men at once I will tell you this one Tale more and I have done Some of these People being Beaten by him sent to Complement him and to Treat with him of a Peace whose Messengers carried him Three sorts of Presents which they presented in these terms Behold Lord here are Five Slaves if thou beest a Furious God that feedeth upon Flesh and Blood eat these and we will bring thee more if thou beest an Affable God behold here Incence and Feathers but if thou beest a Man take these Fowls and these Fruits that we have brought thee CHAP. XXX Of Canniballs WHen Pyrrhus King of Epire Invaded Italy having view'd and and consider'd the Order of the Army the Romans sent out to meet him I know not said he what kind of Barbarians for so the Greeks call'd all other Nations these may be but the Discipline of this Army that I see has nothing of Barbarity in it As much said the Greeks of that Flaminius brought into their Country and Philip beholding from an Eminence the Order and the distribution of the Roman Camp led into his Kingdom by Publius Sulpicius Galba spake to the same effect By which it appears how Cautious Men ought to be of taking things upon trust from Vulgar Opinion and that we are to judg by the Eye of Reason and not from common report I have long had a Man in my House that Liv'd Ten or Twelve Years in the new World discover'd in these latter Days and in that part of it where Villegaignon Landed which he call'd Antartick France This Discovery of so vast a Country seems to be of very great Consideration and we are not sure that hereafter there may not be another so many wiser Men than we have been deceiv'd in this I am afraid our Eyes are bigger than our Bellies and that we have more Curiosity than Capacity for we grasp at all but catch nothing but Air. Plato brings in Solon telling a Story that he had heard from the Priests of Sais in Egypt that of Old and before the Deluge there was a great Island call'd Atlantis scituate directly at the Mouth of the Streight of Gibralter which contain'd more Ground than both Africk and Asia put together and that the Kings of that Country who not only possest that Isle but extended their Dominion so far into the Continent that they had a Country as large as Africk to Egypt and as long as Europe to Tuscany attempted to Encroach even upon Asia and to subjugate all the Nations that Borders upon the Mediterranian Sea as far as the Gulf of Mare Maggiore and to that effect over-ran all Spain the Gaules and Italy so far as to penetrate into Greece where the Athenians stopt the Torrent of their Arms but sometimes after both the Athenians they and their Island were swallowed by the Flood It is very likely that this Violent Irruption and Inundation of Water made a wonderful Change and strange Alteration in the Habitations of the Earth As 't is said that the Sea then divided Sicily from Italy Haec loc avi quondam vasta connulsa ruina Dissiluisse ferunt cum protinus utraque tellus Vna foret 'T is said those places by th' o'rebearing Flood Too Great and Violent to be withstood Split and was thus from one another rent Which were before one Solid Continent Cyprus from Suria the Isle of Negrepont from the firm Land of Beacia and elsewhere united Lands that were separate before by filling up the Channel betwixt them with Sand and Mud Sterilisque diu palus aptaque remis Vicinas urbes alit grave sentit aratrum Where steril remigable Marshes now Feed Neighb'ring Cities and admit the Plough But there is no great appearance that this Isle was this new World so lately discover'd for that almost toucht upon Spain and it were an incredible effect of an Inundation to have tumbled so prodigious a Mass above Twelve Hundred Leagues Besides that our Modern Navigators have already almost discover'd it to be no Island but firm Land and Continent with the East-Indies on the one side and with the Lands under the two Poles on two others or if it be separate from them 't is by so narrow a Streight and so inconsiderable a Channel that it never the more deserves the Name of an Island for that It should seem that in this great Body there are two sorts of Motions the
spew the contagion is very dangerous in the Crown A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them Both are dangerous either to resemble them because they are many or to hate many because they are unresembling And Merchants that go to Sea are in the right when they are cautious that those who embark with them in the same bottom be neither dissolute Blasphemers nor vicious otherways looking upon such society as unfortunate And therefore it was that Bias pleasantly said to some who being with him in a dangerous storm implor'd the assistance of the Gods Peace speak softly said he that they may not know you are here in my company And of more pressing exemple Albuquerque Vice Roy in the Indies for Emanuel King of Portugal in an extream peril of Shipwrack took a young Boy upon his Shoulders for this only end that in the Society of their common danger his innocency might serve to protect him and to recommend him to the Divine favour that they might get safe to Shoar 'T is not that a Wise Man may not live every where content either alone or in the crowd of a Palace But if it be left to his own choice he will tell you that he would fly the very sight of the latter He can endure it if need be but if it be referred to him he will choose the first He cannot think himself sufficiently rid of Vice if he must yet contend with it in other Men Charondas Punisht those for ill Men who were Convict of keeping of ill Company There is nothing so Unsociable and Sociable as Man the one by his Vice the other by his Nature And Antisthenes in my opinion did not give him a satisfactory Answer who Reproach'd him with frequenting ill Company by saying That the Physicians Liv'd well enough amongst the Sick for if they contribute to the health of the Sick no doubt but by the Contagion continual sight of and familiarity with Diseases they must of necessity impair their own Now the end I suppose is all one to Live at more leisure and at greater ease but Men do not always take the right way for they often think they have totally taken leave of all Business when they have only exchang'd one Employment for another There is little less trouble in Governing a private Family than a whole Kingdom wherever the Mind is perplex'd it is in an entire disorder and Domestick Employments are not less troublesome for being less important Moreover for having shak'd off the Court and Publick Employments we have not taken leave of the principal Vexations of Life Ratio prudentia curas Non locus effusi late maris arbiter aufert Reason and Prudence our Affections ease Not remote Voyages unknown Seas Our Ambition our Avarice Irresolution Fears and Inordinate Desires do not leave us when we forsake our Native Country Et post equitem sedet atra cura And who does mount his Horse to this will find He carries Black-brow'd Madam Care behind She oft follows us even to Cloisters and Philosophical Schools nor Desarts nor Caves Hair-shirts nor Fasts can disengage us from her Haeret. lateri lethalis arundo The fatal Shaft sticks to the wounded Side One telling Socrates that such a one was nothing Improv'd by his Travels I very well believe it said he for he took himself along with him Quid terras alio calentes Sole mutamus patria quis exul Se quoque fugit To change our Native Soil why should we Run To seek out one warm'd by another Sun For yet what Banish'd Man could ever find When furthest sent he left himself behind If a Man do not first discharge both himself and his Mind of the Burthen with which he finds himself Oppress'd Motion will but make it press the harder and sit the heavier as the Lading of a Ship is of less Incumbrance when fast and bestow'd in a settled posture you do a Sick Man more harm than good in removing him from place to place you fix and establish the Disease by motion as Stoops dive deeper into the Earth by being mov'd up and down in the place where they are design'd to stand And therefore it is not enough to get remote from the Publick 't is not enough to shift the Soil only a Man must flie from the Popular Dispositions that have taken possession of his Soul he must Sequester and Ravish himself from himself Rupi jam vincula dicas Nam luctata canis nodum arripit attamen illa Cum fugit a collo trahitur pars longa catenae Thou 'lt say perhaps that thou hast broke the Chain Why so the Dog has gnaw'd the Knot in ' twain That ti'd him there but as he flies he feels The pond'rous Chain still rattling at his heels We still carry our Fetters along with us 't is not an absolute Liberty we yet cast back a kind Look upon what we have left behind us the Fancy is still full of our old way of Living Nisi purgatum est pectus quae praelia nobis Atque pericula tunc ingratis insinuandum Quantae conscindunt hominum cupidinis acres Sollicitum curae quantique perinde timores Quid ve superbia spurcitia ac petulantia quantas Efficiunt clades quid luxus desidiesque Unless the Mind be Purg'd what Conflicts streight And Dangers will it not insinuate The Lustful Man how many bitter Cares Do gall and fret and then how many Fears What Horrid Mischiefs what Dire Slaughters too Will not Pride Lust and Petulancy do And what from Luxury can we expect And Sloth but all the ill ill can effect The Mind it self is the Disease and cannot escape from it self In culpa est animus qui se non effugit unquam Still in the Mind the Fault does lie That never from it self can flie and therefore is to be call'd home and confin'd within it self that is the true Solitude and that may be enjoy'd even in Populous Cities and the Courts of Kings though more commodiously apart Now since we will attempt to Live alone and to wave all manner of Conversation amongst Men let us so Order it that our Contentation may depend wholely upon our selves and dissolve all Obligations that Ally us to others Let us obtain this from our selves that we may Live alone in good earnest and Live at our ease too Stilpo having escap'd from the Fire that Consum'd the City where he Liv'd and where he had his Wife Children Goods and all that ever he was Master of destroy'd by the Flame Demetrius Poliorcetes seeing him in so great a Ruine of his Country appear with so Serene and Undisturb'd a Countenance ask'd him if he had receiv'd no Loss To which he made Answer No and that thanks be to God nothing was lost of his which also was the meaning of the Philopher Antisthenes when he pleasantly said that Men should only furnish themselves with such things as would Swim and might with the
Nations at this Day to hurt themselves in good earnest to gain credit to what they profess of which our King relates notable Examples of what he has seen in Poland and done towards himself But besides this which I know to have been imitated by some in France when I came from that famous Assembly of the Estates at Blois I had a little before seen a Maid in Picardy who to manifest the Ardour of her Promises as also her Constancy give her self with a Bodkin she wore in her Hair Four or Five good lusty Stabs into the Arm till the Blood gush'd out to some purpose The Turks make themselves great Skars in Honour of their Mistresses and to the end they may the longer remain they presently clap Fire to the Wound where they hold it an incredible time to stop the Blood and form the Cicatrice People that have been Eye-witnesses of it have both Writ and Sworn it to me But for Ten Aspers there are there every day Fellows to be found that will give themselves a good deep slash in the Arms or Thighs I am willing though to have the Testimonies nearest to us when we have most need of them for Christendom does furnish us with enow And after the Example of our Blessed Guide there have been many who would bear the Cross. We Learn by Testimony very worthy of belief that the King St. Lewis wore a Hair-shirt till in his old Age his Confessor gave him a Dispensation to leave it off and that every Friday he caus'd his Shoulders to be drubb'd by his Priest with Six small Chains of Iron which were always carried about amongst his Night Accoutrements for that purpose William our last Duke of Guienne the Father of this Eleanor who has Transmitted this Dutchy into the Houses of France and England continually for Ten or Twelve Years before he Died wore a Suit of Arms under a Religious Habit by way of Penance Fulke Count of Anjou went as far as Jerusalem there to cause himself to be Whipt by Two of his Servants with a Rope about his Neck before the Sepulchre of our Lord But do we not moreover every Good Friday in several places see great number of Men and Women Beat and Whip themselves till they Lacerate and Cut the Flesh to the very Bones I have often seen this and without Enchantment when it was said there were some amongst them for they go disguis'd who for Mony undertook by this means to save harmless the Religion of others by a contempt of Pain so much the greater as the Incentives of Devotion are more effectual than those of Avarice Q. Maximus Buried his Son when he was a Consul and M. Cato his when Praetor Elect and L. Paulus both his within a few Days one after another with such a Countenance as express'd no manner of Grief I said once Merrily of a certain Person that he had disappointed the Divine Justice for the Violent Death of Three grown up Children of his being one Day sent him for a severe Scourge as it is to be suppos'd he was so far from being Afflicted at the Accident that he rather took it for a particular Grace and Favour of Heaven I do not follow these Monstrous Humours though I lost Two or Three at Nurse if not without Grief at least without Repining and yet there is hardly any Accident that pierces nearer to the quick I see a great many other occasions of Sorrow that should they happen to me I should hardly feel and have despis'd some when they have befallen me to which the World have given so Terrible a Figure that I should Blush to Boast of my Constancy Ex quo intelligitur non in Natura sed in opinione esse aegritudinem By which it is understood that the Grief is not in Nature but Opinion Opinion is a Powerful Party Bold and without Measure Who ever so greedily hunted after Security and Repose as Alexander and Caesar did after Disturbances and Difficulties Terez the Father of Sitalcez was wont to say that when he had no Wars he fancied there was no difference betwixt him and his Groom Cato the Consul to secure some Cities of Spain from Revolt only interdicting the Inhabitants from wearing Arms a great many 〈◊〉 themselves Ferox gens nullam vitam 〈◊〉 sine armis esse A Fierce People who though there was no Life without Arms. How many do we know who have forsakeâ— the Calms and Sweetness of a Quiet Life at Home amongst their Acquaintance tâ— seek out the Horrour of Inhabitable Dâ—â—sarts and having precipitated themselveâ— into so Abject a Condition as to become the Scorn and Contempt of the World have hug'd themselves with the Conceit even to Affectation Cardinal Barromeuâ— who Died lately at Milan in the midst of all the Jollity that the Air of Italy 〈◊〉 Youth Birth and great Riches inviteâ— him to kept himself in so Austere a way of Living that the same Robe he wore 〈◊〉 Summer serv'd him for Winter too 〈◊〉 only Straw for his Bed and his Hours oâ— vacancy from the Affairs of his Employment he continually spent in Study upon his Knees having a little Bread and a Glass of Water set by his Book which waâ— all the Provision of his Repast and all the time he spent in Eating I know some who consentingly have Acquir'd both Profit and Advancement from Cuckoldry 〈◊〉 which the bare Name only affrights so many People If the Sight be not the most necessary of all our Senses 't is at least the most pleasant But the most pleasant and most useful of all our Members seem to â—e those of Generation and yet a great many have conceiv'd a Mortal Hatred against them only for this that they were 〈◊〉 Amiable and have depriv'd themselves of them only for their Value As much thought he of his Eyes that put them out The generality and more solid sort of Men look upon abundance of Children as a great Blessing I and some others think it as a great Benefit to be without them And when you ask Thales why he does not Marry he tells you because he has no mind to leave any Posterity behind him That our Opinion gives the value to things is very manifest in a great many of these which we do not so much regard to prize them but our selves and never consider either their Vertues or their Use but only how dear they cost us As though that were a part of their substance And we only repute for value in them not what they bring to us but what we add to them By which I understand that we are great managers of our Expence As it weighs it serves for so much as it weighs our Opinion will never suffer it to want of its value The Price gives valeue to the Diamond Difficulty to Vertue Suffering to Devotion and Griping to Physick A certain Person to be Poor threw his Crowns into the same Sea to which so many came from all
Lentulus and Metellus have thence taken their chiefest Spring to mount to that degree of Authority to which they did at last arrive Making it of greater use of them than Arms contrary to the opinion of better times For L. Volumnius speaking publickly in favour of the Election of Q. Fabius and Pub. Decius to the Consular Dignity These are Men said he born for War and great in Execution in the Combat of the Tongue altogether to seek Spirits truly Consular The Subtle Eloquent and Learned are only good for the City to make Praetors of to administer Justice Eloquence Flourish'd most at Rome when the Publick Affairs were in the worst condition and the Republick most disquieted with intestine Commotions as a frank and untill'd Soil bears the worst Weeds By which it should seem that a Monarchical Government has less need of it than any other For the Brutality and Facility natural to the common People and that render them subject to be turn'd and twin'd and led by the Ears by this charming harmony of words without weighing or considering the truth and realty of things by the force of reason This Facility I say is not easily found in a single person and it is also more easie by good Education and Advice to secure him from the impression of this Poison There was never any famous Orator known to come out of Persia or Macedon I have entred into this discourse upon the occasion of an Italian I lately receiv'd into my Service and who was Clerk of the Kitchen to the late Cardinal Caraffa till his Death I put this Fellow upon an account of his Office where he fell to discourse of this Palate-Science with such a settled Countenance and Magisterial Gravity as if he had been handling some profound point of Divinity He made a Learned distinction of the several sorts of Appetites of that a Man has before he begins to Eat and of those after the second and third Service The means simply to satisfie the first and then to raise and accuate the other two The ordering of the Sawces first in general and then proceeded to the qualities of the Ingredients and their effects The differences of Sallets according to their seasons which ought to be serv'd up hot and which cold The manner of their Garnishment and Decoration to render them yet more acceptable to the Eye After which he entred upon the order of the whole Service full of weighty and important Considerations Nec minimo sane discrimine refert Quo gestu lepores quo gallina secetur Nor with less Criticism did Observe How we a Hare and how a Hen should Carve And all this set out with lofty and magnifick Words the very same we make use of when we discourse of the Regiment of an Empire Which Learned Lecture of my Man brought this of Terence into my Memory Hoc falsum est hoc adustum est hoc lautum est parum Illud recte iterum sic memento sedulo Moneo quae possum pro mea sapientia Postremo tanquam in speculum in patinas Demea Inspicere jubeo moneo quid facto usus sit This is too Salt this Burnt this is too plain That 's well remember to do so again Thus do I still advise to have things fit According to the Talent of my Wit And then my Demea I command my Cook That into ev'ry Dish he pry and look As if it were a Mirror and go on To order all things as they should be done And yet even the Greeks themselves did very much admire and highly applaud the order and disposition that Paulus Aemylius observ'd in the Feast he made them at his return from Macedon But I do not here speak of effects I speak of words only I do not know whether it may have the same operation upon other Men that it has upon me But when I hear our Architects thunder out their Bombast words of Pillasters Architraves and Coronices of the Corinthian and Dorick Orders and such like stuff my imagination is presently possess'd with the Pallace of Apollidonius in Amadis de Gaule when after all I find them but the palfry peices of my own Kitchin Door And to hear Men talk of Metonomies Metaphors and Allegories and other Grammer words would not a Man think they signified some rare and exatick form of speaking And this other is a Gullery of the same stamp to call the Offices of our Kingdom by the lofty Titles of the Romans though they have no similitude of Function and yet less Authority and Power And this also which I doubt will one Day turn to the Reproach of this Age of ours unworthily and indifferently to confer upon any we think fit the most glorious Sir-names with which Antiquity Honour'd but one or two persons in several Ages Plato carried away the Sir-name of Divine by so universal a consent that never any one repin'd at it or attempted to take it from him And yet the Italians who pretend and with good reason to more spritely Wits and founder Discourses than the other Nations of their time have lately Honour'd Aretine with the same Title in whose Writings save a tumid Phrase set out with smart Periods ingenious indeed but far fetch'd and Fantastick and the Eloquence be it what it will I see nothing in him above the ordinary Writers of his time so far is he from approaching the Ancient Divinity And we make nothing of giving the Sir-name of Great to Princes that have nothing in them above a Popular Grandeur CHAP. LII Of the Parcimony of the Ancients ATtilius Regulus General of the Roman Army in Africk in the height of all his Glory and Victories over the Carthaginians writ to the Republick to acquaint them that a certain Hind he had left in trust with his whole Estate which was in all but Seven Acres of Land was run away with all his Instruments of Husbandry entreating therefore that they would please to call him home that he might take order in his own Affairs lest his Wife and Children should suffer by this disaster Whereupon the Senate appointed another to manage his Business caus'd his Losses to be made good and order'd his Family to be maintain'd at the Publick Expence The Elder Cato returning Consul from Spain sold his Horse of Service to save the Money it would have cost in bringing him back by Sea into Italy And being Governour of Sardignia made all his Visits on foot without other Train than one Officer of the Republick that carried his Robe and a Cencer for Sacrifices and for the most part carried his Male himself He brag'd that he had never worn a Gown that cost above Ten Crowns nor had ever sent above Ten Pence to the Market for one Days Provision and that as to his Country Houses he had not one that was rough cast on the outside Scypio Aemylianus after two Triumphs and two Consul-ships went an Embassy with no more than Seven Servants
long aboad and produces in my opinion the sole true pleasure of humane life all other pleasures in comparison sleep Toward the end like a vapour that still mounts upward it arrives at the Throat where it makes its final residence and concludes the progress I cannot nevertheless understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking beyond Thirst and to forge in his imagination an Appetite artificial and against Nature My Stomach would not proceed so far it has enough to do to deal with what it takes in for necessity My constitution is not to care to Drink but as it follows Eating and to wash down my Meat and for that reason my last Draught is always the greatest And seeing that in old Age we have our Palats furr'd with Phlegmes or deprav'd by some other ill constitution the Wine tasts better to us as the Pores are cleaner wash't and laid more open At least I seldome tast the first Glass well Anacharsis wonder'd that the Greeks drunk in greater Glasses towards the end of a meale than at the beginning which was I suppose for the same reason the Dutch do the same who then begin the Battel Plato forbids Children Wine till eighteen years of Age and being drunk till forty but after forty gives them leave to please themselves and to mix a little liberally in their Feasts the influence of Dionysius that good Deity who restores young men their good humour and old men their youth who mollifies the passions of the Soul as Iron is softned by Fire and in his Laws allows such merry meetings provided they have a discreet Cheif to govern and keep them in order for good and of great utility Drunkenness being a true and certain tryal of every ones Nature and withal fit to inspire old Men with Mettle to divert themselves in Dancing and Musick things of great use and that they dare not attempt when sober He moreover says that Wine is able to supply the Soul with Temperance and the Body with Health nevertheless these Restrictions in part borrowed from the Carthaginians please him That they forbear excesses in the Expeditions of War that every Judge and Magistrate abstain from it when about the Administrations of his place or the Consultations of the Publick affairs That the day is not to be embeazled with it that being a time due to other employments nor that night he intends to get Children 'T is said that the Philosopher Stilpo when opprest with Age purposely hastned his End by drinking pure Wine The same thing but not design'd by him dispatcht also the Philosopher Arcesilaus But 't is an old and pleasant Question Whether the Soul of a wise Man can be overcome by the strength of Wine Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae If it a Head with its besotting fume With Wisdom fortified t' assault presume To what vanity does the good opinion we have of our selves push us The most regular and most perfect Soul in the World has but too much to doe to keep it self upright from being overthrown by its own weakness There is not one of a thousand that is right and setled so much as one Minute in a whole Life and that may not very well doubt whether according to her Natural condition she can ever be But to join Constancy to it is her utmost Perfection I mean though nothing should justle and discompose her which a thousand Accidents may do 'T is to much purpose that the great Poet Lucretius keeps such a clutter with his Philosophy when behold he is ruin'd with a Philtre one poor draught of Love Is it to be imagin'd that an Apoplexy will not make an Ass of Socrates as well as of a Porter Some have forgot their own names by the violence of a Disease and a slight Wound has turn'd the Judgment of others topsey-turvey Let him be as wise as he will but in fine he is a Man and than that what is there more miserable or more nothing Wisdom does not force our natural dispositions Sudores itaque pallorem existere toto Corpore infringi linguam vocemque aboriri Caligare oculos sonere aures succidere artus Denique considere ex animi terrore videmus Paleness and Sweat the Countenance confounds The Tongue 's deliver'd of Abortive Sounds The Eyes grow dim Ears deaf the Knees grow lame And do refuse to prop the trembling Frame And lastly out of fear of mind we all Things see into a Dissolution fall He must shut his Eyes against the blow that threatens him he must tremble upon the Margent of a precipice like a Child Nature having reserv'd these light works of her Authority not to be forc't by our Reason and Stoical vertue to teach Man his Mortality and little power He turns pale with fear red with shame and groans with the Cholick if not very loud at least so as to confess his frailty Humani à se nihil alienum putet To any other man what may befall Let him not think strange to himself at all The Poets that feign all things at pleasure dare not acquit their greatest Hero's of Tears Sic fatur lacrimans classique immittit habenas Thus did he weeping say and then his Fleet Did to the mercy of the Sea commit 'T is sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations for totally to suppress them is not in him to do Even our great Plutarch that excellent and perfect Judge of Humane Actions when he sees Brutus and Torquatus Murther their own Children begins to doubt whether Vertue could proceed so far and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other Passion All Actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to Sinister interpretation For as much as our liking does no more proceed from what is above than from what is below it Let us leave this other Sect and make a downright profession of fierceness But when even in that Sect reputed the most quiet and gentle we hear these Rhodomontades of Metrodorus Occupavi te Fortuna atque cepi Omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses Fortune thou art mine I have thee fast and have made all the Avenues so sure thou canst not come at me When Anaxarchus by the command of Nicocreon the Tyrant of Cyprus was put into a Stone-Morter and laid upon with Mauls of Iron ceases not to say Strike Batter Break 't is not Anaxarchus 't is but his Sheath that you pound and bray so When we hear our Martyrs cry out to the Tyrant in the middle of the Flame this side is Roasted enough fall to and eate it is enough fall to work with the other When we hear the Child in Josephus torn piece-meal with biting Pincers defying Antiochus and crying out with a constant and assured Voice Tyrant thou losest thy labour I am still at ease where is the the Pain where are the Torments with which thou
indifferently If I thought my self perfectly good and wise I would speak with open mouth and rattle it out to some purpose To speak less of a man's self than what one really is is folly not modesty and to take that for currant pay which is under a man's value is Pusillanimity and Cowardize according to Aristotle No Vertue assists it self with Falshood Truth is never the Master of Errour To speak more of ones self than is really true is not always Presumption 't is moreover very often Folly â—o be immeasurably pleas'd with what one is and to fall into an indiscreet self-love is in my opinion the Substance of this Vice The most Sovereign Remedy to cure it is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who in forbidding men to speak of themselves do consequently at the same time interdict thinking of themselves too Pride dwells in the Thought the Tongue can have but a very little share in it They fancy that to think of ones self is to be delighted with himself to frequent and to converse with a man's self to be over-indulgent But this Excess springs only in those who only take of themselves a Superficial View and dedicate their main Inspection to their Affairs that call Meditation raving and idleness looking upon themselves as a third person only and a stranger If any one be ravisht with his own Knowledge whilst he looks only on those below him let him but turn his Eye upward towards past Ages and his Pride will be abated when he shall there find so many thousand Wits that trample him under foot If he enter into a flattering vanity of his personal Valour let him but recollect the Lives of Scipio Epaminondas so many Armies and Nations that leave him so far behind them and he will be cur'd of his Self-opinion No particular Quality can make any man proud that will at the same time put so many other meek and imperfect ones as he has in him in the other Scale and the Nothingness of Humane Condition to ballance the weight Because Socrates had alone swallow'd to purpose the Precept of his God To know himself and by that study was arriv'd to the perfection of setting himself at naught he was only reputed worthy the Title of a Sage Whosoever shall so know himself let him boldly speak it out CHAP. VII Of Recompences of Honour THey who write the Life of Augustus Caesar observe this in his Military Discipline That he was wonderfully liberal of Gifts to Men of Merit but that as to the true Recompences of Honour he was as sparing So it is that he had himself been gratified by his Uncle with all the Military Recompences before he had ever been in the Field It was a pretty Invention and receiv'd into most Governments of the World to Institute certain vain and insignificant Distinctions to Honour and recompence Vertue such as the Crowns of Lawrel Oak and Myrrh the particular Fashion of some Garment the priviledge to ride in a Coach in the City or to have a Torch by Night some peculiar place assign'd in publick Assemblies the Prerogative of certain additional Names and Titles certain Distinctions in their bearing of Coats of Arms and the like The use of which according to the several Humours of Nations has been variously receiv'd and do yet continue We in France as also several of our Neighbous have the Orders of Knighthood that are instituted only for this end And 't is in earnest a very good and profitable Custom to find out an Acknowledgment for the Worth of Rare and Excellent Men and to satisfie their Ambition with Rewards that are not at all Chargeable either to Prince or People And that which has been always found both by ancient Experience and that we our selves may also have observ'd in our own times that men of Quality have ever been more jealous of such Recompences than of those wherein there was Gain and Profit is not without very good ground and reason If with Reward which ought to be simply a Recompence of Honour they should mix other Emoluments and add Riches this mixture in stead of procuring an encrease of Estimation would vilifie and abate it The Order of St. Michael which has been so long in repute amongst us had no other nor greater Commodity than that it had no communication with any other which produc'd this Effect that formerly there was no Office nor Title whatever to which the Gentry pretended with so great Desire and Affection as they did to that nor Quality that carried with it more Respect and Grandure Vertue more willingly embracing and with greater Ambition aspiring to a Recompence truly her own and rather Honourable than Beneficial For intruth the other Rewards have not so great a Dignity of Usage by reason they are laid out upon all sorts of Occasions With Money a man pays the Wages of a Servant the Diligence of a Courrier Dancing Vaulting Speaking and the vilest Offices we receive nay and reward Vice with it too as Flattery Treachery and Pimping and therefore 't is no wonder if Vertue does less desire and less willingly receive this common sort of Payment than that which is proper and peculiar to her throughout Generous and Noble Augustus had reason to be a better Husband and more sparing of this than the other by how much Honour is a Priviledge that extracts its principal Esteem from Rarity and Vertue its self Cui malus est nemo quis bonus esse potest To whom none seemeth ill who good can seem We do not intend it for a Commendation when we say that such a one is careful in the Education of his Children by reason it is a common Act how just and well done soever no more than we commend a great Tree where the whole Forrest is the same I do not think that any Citizen of Sparta valued himself much upon his Valour it being the universal Vertue of the whole Nation and as little glorified himself upon his Fidelity and contempt of Riches There is no Recompence due to Vertue how great soever that is once past into a Custom and I know not withal whether we can ever call it Great being Common Seeing that these Remunerations of Honour have no other Value and Estimation but only this That few people enjoy them 't is but to be liberal of them to bring them down to nothing And though there should be now more men found than in former times worthy of our Order the estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated nor the honour made cheap And it may easily fall out that more may merit it for there is no Vertue that so easily dilates it self as that of Military Valour There is another true perfect and Philosophical of which I do not speak and only make use of the word in the common acceptation much greater than this and more full which is a force and assurance of Souls equally disposing
all sorts of adverse Accidents equal uniform and constant of which ours is no more than one little Ray. Usance Precept Example and Custom can do all in all to the establishment of that whereof I am speaking and with great facility render it vulgar as by the experience of our Civil War is manifest enough and whoever could at this instant unite us Catholick and Hugonot into one Body and set us upon some brave Enterprize we should again make our ancient Military Reputation to flourish It is most certain that in times past the Recompence of this Order had not only a regard to Valour but had a further Prospect It never was the Reward of a Valiant Souldier but of a Great Captain The Science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so honourable a Guerdon there was therein a more Universal Military Expertness requir'd and that comprehended the most and the greatest Qualities of a Military man Neque enim eaedem Militares Imperatoriae artes sunt For the Military knowledge requir'd in a common Souldier and a General are not the same as also besides a Condition suitable to such a Dignitâ— But I say that though more men were worthy than formerly yet ought it not to be more liberally distributed and that it were better to fall short in not giving it to all to whom it should be acknowledged due than for ever to loâ—e as we have lately done the Fruit of so profitable an Invention No man of Spirit will dâ—ign to advantage himself with what is in common wiâ—h many And such of the present time as have least merited this Recompence make the greater shew of didaining it being thereby to be rankt with those to whom so much wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring and debasing the Character which was 〈◊〉 particular right Now to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this suddenly to create and bring into credit a like new Institution is not a proper Attempt for so licentious and so sick a Time as this wherein we now are and it will fall out that the last will from its birth incur the same Inconveniences that have ruin'd the othâ—â— The Rules for the dispensing of this New Order had need to be extreamly clipt and bound under great Restrictions to give it Authority and this tumultuous Season is incapable of such a Curb Besides that before this can be brought into Repute 't is necessary that the Memory of the first and the Contempt into which it is faln be totally buried in Oblivion This place might naturally enough admit of some Discourse upon the Consideration of Valour and the Difference of this Vertue from others But Plutarch having so often handled this Subject I should give my self an unnecessary Trouble to repeat what he has said but this is worth considering That our Nation place Valour in the Highest Degree of Vertue as the very Word does evidence being deriv'd from Value and that according to our Usance when we decipher a Worthy Man or a Man of Value only in our Court style to say a Valiant Man after the Roman way For the general Appellation of Vertue with them takes Etymology from Force The proper sole and essential Method of the French Nobleness is the Practice of Arms And 't is likely that the first Vertue which discovered its self amongst Men and that has given some Advantage over others was this by which the Strongest and most Valiant have Lorded it over the Weaker and Entail'd upon themselves a particular Authority and Reputation Or else that these Nations being very Warlike has given the Preheminence to that of the Vertues which was most familiar to them and that they thought of the most worthy Character Just as our Passion and the Feaverish Solicitude we have of the Chastity of Woman makes that to say A good Woman a Woman of Worth and a Woman of Honour and Vertue signifie no more but a Chast Woman as if to Oblige her to that one Duty we were indifferent as to all the rest and gave them the Reins to all other Faults whatever to compound for that one of Incontinence CHAP. VIII Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children To Madam D'ESTISSAC MAdam If the Strangeness and Novelty of my Subject which are wont to give Value to things do not save me I shall never come off with Honour from this foolish Attempt But 't is so Fantastick and carries a Face so unlike the common Usance that that peradventure may make it pass 'T is a Melancholick Humour and consequently an Humour very much an Enemy to my Natural Complexion engendred by the Pensiveness of the Solitude into which for some years past I have retir'd my self that first put into my head this idle Fancy of Writing Wherein finding my self totally Unprovided and Empty of other Matter I presented my Self to my Self for Argument and Subject 'T is the only Book in the World of its kind and of a wild and extravagant Design there is nothing worth Remark but the Extravagancy in this Affair for in a Subject so vain and frivolous the best Workman in the World could not have given it a Form fit to recommend it to any manner of Esteem Now Madam being to draw mine own Picture to the Life I had omitted the onely graceful Feature had I not therein represented the Honour I have ever had for you and your Merits which I have purposely chosen to say in the beginning of this Chapter by reason that amongst many other Excellent Qualities you are Mistress of that of the tender Love you have manifested to your Children is worthily seated in one of the highest places Whoever shall know at what age Monsieur d'Estissac your Husband left you a Widow the great and honourable Matches have since been offer'd to you as many as to any Lady of your Condition in France the Constancy and steadiness wherein you have liv'd so many years and wherewith you have gone through so many sharp Difficulties the Charge and Conduct of their Affairs who have prosecuted you in every Corner of the Kingdom and who yet are not weary of tormenting you and the happy Direction you have given in all this either by your single Prudence or good Fortune will easily conclude with me that we have not so lively an Example as yours of maternal Affection in our times I praise God Madam that it has been so well employ'd for the great hopes that Monsieur d'Estissac the Son gives of himâ—elf do advance sufficient assurance that when he comes to age you will reap from him all the Obedience and Gratitude of a very good man But forasmuch as by reason of his tender years he has not been capable of taking notice of those Offices of extreamest kindness he has in so great number receiv'd from you I will if these Papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands when I shall neither have Mouth nor Speech left to deliver it to him that
he shall receive a true account of those things from me which shall be more effectually manifested to him by their own Effects by which he will understand that there is not a Gentleman in France who stands more indebted to a Mothers Care and that he cannot for the future give a better nor more certain Testimony of himself of his own Worth and Vertue than by acknowledging you for that Excellent Mother you are If there be any Law truly Natural that is to say any Instinct that is seen universally and perpetually imprinted in both Beasts and Men which is not without Controversie I can then say that in my opinion next to the Care every Animal has of his own Preservation and to avoid that which may hurt him the Affection that the Begetter bears to his Off-spring holds the second place in this File And seeing that Nature seems to have recommended it to us having regard to the Extension and Propagation of the successive Piece of this Machine 't is no wonder if on the contrary that of Children towards their Parents is not so great To which we may add this other Aristotelian Consideration that he who confers a Benefit on any one loves him better than he is belov'd by him again and that every Artificer is fonder of his Work than if that Work had Sense it would be of him by reason that it is dear to us to be and to be consists in moving and action Therefore every one has in some sort a being in his Work Who confers a Benefit exercises a fair and honest Action who receives it exercises the Vtile only Now the Vtile is much less amiable than the Honest the Honest is stable and permanent supplying him who has done it with a continual Gratification The Vtile loses it self easily slides away and the Memory of it is neither so fresh nor so pleasing Those things are dearest to us that have cost us most and giving is more chargeable than receiving Since it has pleas'd God to endue us with some Capacity of weighing and considering things to the end we may not like Brutes be servilely subjected and enslav'd to the Laws common to both but that we should by judgment and a voluntary liberty apply our selves to them We ought indeed something to yield to the simple Authority of Nature but not suffer our selves to be tyrannically hurried away and transported by her being that Reason alone should have the Conduct of our Inclinations I for my part have a strange Disgust to those Propensions that are started in us without the Mediation and Direction of the Judgment As upon the Subject I am speaking of I cannot entertain that Passion of Dandling and Caressing an Infant scarcely born having as yet neither motion of Soul nor shape of Body distinguishable by which they can render themselves amiable and have not willingly suffered them to be nurs'd near me A true and regular Affection ought to spring and encrease with the knowledge they give us of themselves and then if they are worthy of it the natural Propension walking hand in hand with Reason to cherish them with a truly Paternal Love and to judge and discern also if they be otherwise still rendring our selves to Reason notwithstanding the Inclination of Nature It goes through sometimes quite otherwise and most commonly we find our selves more taken with the running up and down the Play and Puerile Simplicity of our Children than we do afterwards with their most compleated Actions as if we had lov'd them for our sport like Monkies and not as Men. And some there are who are very liberal in buying them Balls to play withal who are very close-handed for the least necessary Expence when they come to age Nay to that degree that it looks as if the jealousie of seeing them appear in and enjoy the World when we are about to leave it render'd us more niggardly and stingy towards them It vexes us that they tread upon our Heels as if to solicite us to go out and if this be to be fear'd since the order of things will have it so that they cannot to speak the truth be nor live but at the expence of our Being and Life we should never meddle with getting Children For my part I think it Cruelty and Injustice not to receive them into the share and society of our Goods and not to make them Partakers in the Intelligence of our Domestick Affairs when they are capable and not to lessen and contract our own Expences to make the more room for theirs seeing we beget them to that effect 'T is unjust that an old Fellow deaf lame and half-dead should alone in a Corner of the Chimney enjoy the Goods that were sufficient for the Maintenance and Advancement of many Children and to suffer them in the mean time to lose their best Years for want of means to put themselves into publick service and the knowledge of men A man by this means drives them to desperate Courses and to seek out by any means how unjust or dishonourable soever to provide for their own support As I have in my time seen several young men of good Extraction so addicted to stealing that no Correction could cure them of it I know one of a very good Family to whom at the request of a Brother of his a very honest and brave Gentleman I once spoke upon this account who made answer and confest to me roundly that he had been put upon this dirty Practice by the Severity and Avarice of his Father but that he was now so accustom'd to 't he could not leave it At which time he was trapt stealing a Ladies Rings being come into her Chamber as she was dressing with several others He put me in mind of a story I had heard of another Gentleman so perfect and accomplisht in this gentile Trade in his Youth that after he came to his Estate and resolv'd to give it over could not hold his hands nevertheless if he past by a Shop where he saw any thing he lik'd from catching it up though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards to pay for 't And I have my self seen several so habituated to this laudable quality that even amongst their Comrades they could not forbear filching though with intent to restore what they had taken I am a Gascon and yet there is no Vice I so little understand as that I hate it something more by Disposition than I condemn it in my Discourse I do not so much as desire any thing of another man's This Province of ours is in plain truth a little more suspected than the other parts of the Kingdom and yet we have often seen in our times men of good â—amilies of other Provinces in the hands of Justice Convicted of several abominable Theâ—ts I fear this Debauch is in some sort to be attributed to the forementioned Vice of the Fathers and if a man should tell me as a Lord
had all the pleasure of it and all the Obligation I forc'd and rack'd my self to put on and maintain this vain Disguise and have by that means depriv'd my self of the pleasure of his Conversation and I doubt in some measure his Affection which could not but be very cold towards me having never other from me than Austerity nor felt other than a tyrannical manner of proceeding I find this Complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended for as I my self know by too cortain Experience there is no so sweet Consolation in the loss of Friends as the conscience of having had no reserve of secret for them and to have had with them a perfect and entire Communication Oh my Friend am I the better for being sensible of this or am I the worse I am doubtless much the better I am consolated and honoured in the sorrow for his death Is it not a pious and a pleasing Office of my Life to be always upon my Friends Obsequies Can there be any joy equal to this Privation I open my self to my Family as much as I can and very willingly let them know in what estate they are in my opinion and good will as I do every body else I make haste to bring out and expose my self to them for I will not have them mistaken in me in any thing Amongst other particular Customs of our ancient Gauls this as Caesar reports was one That the Sons never presented themselves before their Fathers nor durst never appear in their company in publick till they began to bear Arms as if they would intimate by that that it was also time for their Fathers to receive them into their familiarity and acquaintance I have observ'd yet another sort of Indiscretion in Fathers of my time That not contented with having depriv'd their Children during their own long lives of the share they naturally ought to have had in their Fortunes they afterwards leave to their Wives the same Authority over their Estates and Liberty to dispose of them according to their own fancy And have known a certain Lord one of the principal Officers of the Crown who having in his prospect by right of succession above Fifty thousand Crowns yearly Revenue died necessitous and overwhelm'd with debt at above fifty years of age his Mother in his extreamest decrepitude and necessity being yet in possession of all his Goods by the Will of his Father who had for his part liv'd till near Fourscore years Old This appears by no means reasonable to me And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man whose Affairs are well enough to seek a Wife that will charge his Estate with too great a Joynture There being no sort of foreign Debt or Encumbrance that brings greater and more frequent ruin to Estates and Families than that My Predecessors have ever been aware of that danger and provided against it and so have I But these who dissuade us from rich Wives for fear they should be less tractable and kind are out in their Advice to make a man lose a real Convenience for so frivolous a Conjecture It costs an unreasonable Woman no more to pass over one Reason than another They love but where they have the most wrong Injustice allures them as the Honour of their vertuous Actions does the good and the more Riches they bring with them they are by so much the more gentle and sweet Natur'd as women who are fair are more inclin'd and proud to be chast 'T is reasonable to leave the administration of Affairs to the Mothers during the minority of the Children but the Father has brought them up very ill if he cannot hope that when they come to Maturity they will have more Wisdom and Dexterity in the management of Affairs than his Wife considering the ordinary Weakness of the Sex It were notwithstanding to say the truth more against Nature to make the Mothers depend upon the Discretion of their Children They ought to be plentifully provided for to maintain themselves according to their Quality and Age by reason that Necessity is much more indecent and insupportable to them than to men and therefore the Son is rather to be cut short than the Mother In general the most judicious Distribution of our Goods when we come to dye is in my Opinion to let them be distributed according to the Custom of the Country The Laws have considered it better than we know how to do and 't is better to let them fail in their Election than rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours Neither are they properly ours since by a Civil Prescription and without us they are all judg'd to certain Successors And although we have some liberty beyond that yet I think we ought not without great and manifest cause to take away that from one which his Fortune has allotted him and to which the publick Equity gives him Title and that it is against reason to abuse this liberty in making it to serve our own frivilous and private Fancies My Destiny has been kind to me in not preventing me with Occasions to tempt and divert my Affection from the common and legitimate Institution I see well enough with whom 't is time lost to employ a long Diligence of Good Offices A word ill taken obliterates ten years merit and he is happy who is in place to oyle their Good Will at this last Passage The last Action carries it Not the best and most frequent Offices but the most recent and present do the Work These are people that play with their Wills as with Apples and Rods to gratifie or chastise every Action of these that pretend to an Interest in their Care 'T is a thing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled and tost and alter'd every moment And wherein the Wise men of the World determin once for all having therein above all things a regard to reason and the publick observance We also lay these Masculine Substitutions too much to heart proposing a ridiculous Eternity to our Names And are moreover too superstitious in the vain Conjectures of the future which we derive from the little Observations we make of the Words and Actions of Children Peradventure they might have done me an injustice in dispossessing me of my Right for having been the most dull and heavy the most slow and unwilling at my Book not of all my Brothers only but of all the Boys in the whole Province Whether about learning my Lesson or any other bodily Exercise 'T is a folly to make an extraordinary Election upon the Credit of these Divinations wherein we are so often deceived If the Rule of Primogeniture were to be violated and the Destinies corrected in the Choice they have made of our Heirs one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some enormous personal Deformity a constant and incorrigible Vice and in the opinion of us French who are great admirers of Beauty
of important prejudice The pleasant Dialogue betwixt Plato's Legislator and his Citizens will be an Ornament to this place What said they feeling themselves about to dye may we not dispose of our own to whom we please Good God what cruelty That it shall not be lawful for us according as we have been serv'd and attended in our Sickness in our Old Age and other Affairs to give more or less to those whom we have found most diligent about us at our own Fancy and Discretion To which the Legislator answers thus My Friends who are now without question very soon to dye it is hard for you in the Condition you are either to know your selves or what is yours according to the Delphick Inscription I who make the Laws am of opinion that you neither are your selves your own neither is that yours of which you are possest Both your Goods and you belong to your Families as well those past as those to come but yet both your Family and Goods do much more appertain to the publick Wherefore lest any Flatterer in your Age or in your Sickness or any Passion of your own should unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust Will I shall take care to prevent that inconvenience But having respect both to the universal Interest of the City and that of your particular Family I shall establish Laws and make it by lively Reasons appear that a particular Convenience ought to give place to the common Benefit Go then chearfully where Humane Necessity calls you It belongs to me who have no more respect to one thing than another and who as much as in me lies am careful of the publick Concern to take care of what you leave behind you To return to my Subject It appears to me that such women are very rarely born to whom the Prerogative over men in others excepted is in any sort due unless it be for the Punishment of such as in some lustful Humour have voluntarily submitted themselves to them but that does nothing concern the Old ones of which we are now speaking This Consideration it is which has made us so willingly to forge and give force to a Law which was never yet seeâ— by any one and by which women are excluded the Succession to this Crown and there is hardly a Government in the World where it is not pleaded as 't is here by meer reason of the thing that gives it Authority though Fortune has given it more Credit in some places than in others 'T is dangerous to leave the disposal of our Succession to their Judgment according to the Choice they shall make of Children which is often fantastick and unjust for the irregular Appetite and depreav'd Tast they have during the time of their being with Child they have at all other times in the mind We commonly see them fond of the most weak ricketty and deform'd Children or of those if they have such as are hanging at their Breasts For not having sufficient force of reason to choose and embrace that which is most worthy they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carried away where the impressions of Nature are most alone Like Animals that know their Young no longer than they give them suck As to what remains it is easie by experience to be discern'd that this Natural Affection to which we give so great Authority has but a very weak and shallow Root For a very little profit we every day ravish their own Children out of the Mothers Arms and make them take ours in their room We make them abandon their own to some pitiful Nurse to which we disdain to commit ours or to some Shee Goat forbidding them not only to give them suck what danger soever they run thereby but moreover to take any manner of care of them that they may wholly be taken up with the care of and attendance upon ours And we see in most of them an adulterate Affection begot by Custom toward the faster Children more vehement than the Natural and a greater Solicitude for the Preservation of those they have taken charge of than their own And that which I was saying of Goats was upon this account that it is ordinary all about where I live to see the Country-women when they want Suck of their own to call Goats to their assistance And I have at this hour two Foot-men that never suck't womans Milk more than eight days after they were born These Goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little Children will know their Voices when they cry and come running to them when if any other than that they are acquanted with be presented to them they refuse to let it suck and the Child to another Goat will do the same I saw one the other day from whom they had taken away the Goat that us'd to nourish it by reason the Father had only borrow'd it of a Neighbour that would not touch any other they could bring and doubtless dyed of hunger Beasts do as easily alter and corrupt their Natural Affection as we I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain place of Lybia there are very many mistake he says that the women are there in common but that the Child so soon as it can go finds him out in the Crowd for his Father to whom he is first led by his Natural Inclination Now to consider this simple reason for loving our Children for having begot them therefore calling them our Second selves It appears methinks that there is another kind of Production proceeding from us that should no less recommend them to our Love For that which we engender by the Soul the issue of our Understandings Courage and Abilities spring from nobler Parts than those of the Body and that are much more our own We are both Father and Mother in this Generation these cost us a great deal more and brings us more Honour if they have any thing of good in them For the Value of our other Children is much more theirs than ours the share we have in them is very little but of these all the Beauty all the Grace and Value is ours as also they more lively represent and resemble us than the rest Plato adds that these are immortal Children that immortalize and deify their Fathers as Lycurgus Solon and Minos Now Histories being full of Examples of the common Affection of Fathers to their Children it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few also of this other kind Heliodorus that good Bishop of Tricea rather chose to lose the Dignity Profit and Devotion of so Venerable a Prelacy than to lose his Daughter a Daughter that continues to this day very Graceful and Comely but notwithstanding peradventure a little too curiously and wantonly trick't and too amorous for an Ecclesiastical and Sacerdotal Daughter There has been one Labienus at Rome a Man of great Valour and Authority and amongst other good Qualities excellent
in all sorts of Literature who was as I take it the Son of that great Labienus the chiefest of Caesar's Captains in the Wars of Gaule and who afterwards siding with Pompey the Great so valiantly maintained his Cause till he was by Caesar defeated in Spain This Labienus of whom I am now speaking had several Enemies who were emulous of his Vertue and 't is likely the Courtiers and Minions of the Emperour of his time who were very angry at and displeas'd with his Freedom and Paternal Humours which he yet retain'd against Tyranny with which it is to be suppos'd he had tincted his Books and Writings His Adversaries before the Magistracy of Rome prosecuted several Pieces he had publish't and prevail'd so far against him as to have them condemn'd to the Fire It was in him that this new Example of Punishment was begun which was afterwards continued against several others at Rome to punish even Writing and Studies with Death There would not be means and matter enough of Cruelty did we not mix with them things that Nature has exempted from all Sense and Suffering as Reputation and the Products of Wit and communicate Corporal Punishments to the Learning and Monuments of the Muses Now Labienus could not suffer this loss nor survive these his so dear Issue and therefore caus'd himself to be convey'd and shut up alive in the Monument of his Ancestors where he made shift to kill and bury himself at once 'T is hard to shew a more violent Paternal Affection than this Cassius Severus a Man of great Eloquence and his very intimate Friend seeing his Books burnt cry'd out That by the same Sentence they should as well condemn him to the Fire too being that he carried in his Memory all that they contain'd The like Accident befel Geruntius Cordus who being accus'd for having in his Books commended Brutus and Cassius that dirty servile and degenerated Senate and worthy a worse Master than Tiberius condemned his Writings to the Flame He was willing to bear them Company and kil'd himself with Fasting The good Lucan being condemn'd by that Beast Nero at the last gasp of his Life when the greater part of his Blood was already gone by the Veins of his Arms which he had caus'd his Physitian to open to make him dye and that the cold had seiz'd of all his Extremities and began to approach his Vital Parts the last thing he had in his Memory was some of the Verses of his Battle of Pharsalia which he repeated and and dyed with them in his Mouth What was this but taking a Tender and Paternal Leave of his Children in imitation of the Valedictions and Embraces wherewith we part with ours when we come to dye and an effect of that Natural Inclination that suggests to our remembrance in this Extremity those things which were dearest to us during the time of our Life Can we believe that Epicurus who as he says himself dying of intolerable Pains of the Chollick had all his Consolation in the Beauty of the Doctrine he left behind him could have received the same satisfaction from many Children though never so well educated had he had them as he did from the issue of so many rich and admirable Writings Or that had it been in his choice to have left behind him a deform'd and untoward Child or a foolish and ridiculous Book he or any other Man of his Understanding would not rather have chose to have run the first Misfortune than the other It had been for example peradventure an Impiety in St. Austin if on the one hand it had been propos'd to him to bury his Writings from which Religion has receiv'd so great Advantage or on the other to bury his Children had he had them had he not rather chose to bury his Children had he had them had he not rather chose to bury his Children And I know not whether I had not much rather have begot a very Beautiful one thorough my Society with the Muses than by lying with my Wife To this such as it is what I give it I give absolutely and irrevocably as Men do to their bodily Children That little I have done for it is no more at my own dispose It may know many things that are gone from me and from me keep that which I have not retain'd And that as a Stranger I might borrow thence should I stand in need If I am wiser than my Book it is richer than I. There are few Men addicted to Poetry who would not be much Prouder to be Father to the Aeneid than to the hansomest and best fashion'd Youth of Rome and that would not much better bear the loss of the one than the other For according to Aristotle the Poet of all sorts of Artificers is the fondest of his Work 'T is hard to believe that Epaminondas who boasted that in lieu of all Posterity he left two Daughters behind him which would one day do their Father Honour meaning the two Victories he obtain'd over the Lacedemonians would willingly have consented to exchange those for the most Beautiful Creature of all Greece Or that Alexander or Caesar ever wish't to be depriv'd of the Grandeur of their Glorious Exploits in War for the conveniency of Children and Heirs how perfect and accomplish't soever Nay I make a great Question whether Phidias or any other excellent Statuary would be so solicitous of the Preservation and Continuance of his Natural Children as he would be of a rare Statue which with long labour and study he had perfected according to Art And to those furious and irregular Passions that have sometimes flam'd in Fathers towards their own Daughters and in Mothers towards their own Sons the like is also found in this other sort of Parentry Witness what is related of Pygmalion who having made the Statue of a Woman of singular Beauty fell so passionately in love with this Work of his that the Gods in favour of his Passion must inspire it with Life Tentatum mollescit ebur positóque rigore Subsidit digitis The tempted Ivory Pliant grows and now Under his wanton Touch does yield and bow CHAP. IX Of the Arms of the Parthians 'T Is an ill custom and a little unmanly the Gentlemen of our time have got not to put on their Arms but just upon the point of the most extream necessity and to lay them by again so soon as ever there is any shew of the Danger being a little over from whence many Disorders arise For every one bustling and running to his Arms just when he should go to Charge has his Cuirass to buckle on when his Companions are already put to rout Our Ancestors were wont to give their Head-piece Lance and Gantlets to carry but never put off the other Pieces so long as there was any work to be done Our Troops are now comber'd and render'd unsightly with the clutter of Baggage and Servants that cannot be from their Masters
mutually have strove With all their utmost Force the Soil to t' improve The Debauchery and Irregularity of our Appetite outstrip all the Inventions we can contrive to satisfie it As to Arms we have more that are Natural than the most part of other Animals more various Motions of Members and naturally and without Lesson and extract more Service from them Those that are trained up to fight naked are seen to throw themselves into the like hazards that we do If some Beasts surpass us in this Advantage we surpass several others and the Industry of fortifying the Body and covering it by acquir'd means we have by instinct and natural Precept That it is so the Elephant sharpens and whets the Teeth he makes use of in War for he has particular ones for that Service which he spares and never imploys them at all to any other use when Bulls go to fight they toss and throw the Dust about them Boars whet their Tuskes and the Ichneumon when he is to engage with the Crocodile fortifies his Body covers and crusts it all over with a certain close wrought and well-temper'd Slime as with a Cuirass Why shall we not say That it is also Natural for us to arm our selves with Wood and Iron As to Speech it is certain that if it be not natural it is not necessary Nevertheless I believe that a Child which had been brought up in an absolute Solitude remote from all Society of Men which would be a tryal very hard to make would have some kind of Speech to express his Meaning And 't is not to be suppos'd that Nature should have denyed that to us which she has given to several other Animals For what is this Faculty we observe in them of complaining rejoycing calling to one another for Succor and the softer Murmurings of Love which they perform with the Voice other than Speech And why should they not speak to one another They speak to us and we to them In how many several Tones do we speak to our Dogs and they answer us We converse with them in another sort of Language and other Appellations than we do with Birds Hogs Oxen and Horses and alter the Idiom according to the kind Cosi per entro loro schiera bruna S'ammusa l'una con l'altra formica Forse à piar lor via lor fortuna Of provident Ants thus do the sable Bands 'Gainst one another head to head make stands T' observe each others ways perhaps and some Perhaps to spy what Prizes are brought home Lactantius seems to attribute to Beasts not only Speech but Risibility also And the difference of Language which is manifest amongst us according to the variety of Countries is also observ'd in Animals of the same kind Aristotle in proof of this instances the various Calls of Partridges according to the Scituations of Places Variaeque Volucres Longè alias alio jaciunt in tempore voces Et partim mutant cum tempestatibus unà Raucisonos cantus And sev'ral Birds do from their warbling Throats At sev'ral times utter quite different Notes And some their hoarse Songs with the Seasons Change But it is yet to be known what Language this Child would speak and of that what is said by guess has no great appearance If a Man will alledge to me in Opposition to this Opinion that those who are naturally deaf speak not I answer That that follows not only because they could not receive the Instruction of speaking by Ear but rather because the Sense of Hearing of which they are depriv'd relates to that of Speaking and hold together by a natural and inseparable Tye in such manner that what we speak we must first speak to our selves within and make it first sound in our own Ears before we can utter it to others All this I have said to prove the resemblance there is in Human things and to bring us back and joyn us to the Crowd We are neither above nor below the rest All that is under Heaven says the Wise Man runs one Law and one Fortune Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis All things remain Kept short and bound in the same fatal Chain There is indeed some difference there are several Orders and Degrees but it is under the Aspect of one same Nature res quaeque suo ritu procedit omnes Faedere Naturae certo discrimina servant All things by their own rites proceed and draw Towards their ends by Natures certain Law Man must be compell'd and restrain'd within the Bounds of this Polity Miserable Creature he is not in a condition really to step over the Raylâ— â—he is fettered and circumscrib'd he is subjected to the same Necessity the other Creatures of his Rank and Order are and of a very mean Condition without any Prerogative or true and real Preheminence That which he attributes to himself by vain Fancy and Opinion has neither Body nor Tast And if it be so that he only of all the Animals hath this Priviledge of Imagination and irregularity of Thoughts representing to him that which is that which is not and that he would have the False and the True 't is an Advantage dearly bought and of which he has very little reason to be Proud Seeing that from thence springs the principal and original Fountain of all the Evils that befal him Sin Sickness Irresolution Affliction and Despair I say then to return to my Subject that there is no apparence to induce a Man to believe that Beasts should by a natural and forc'd Inclination do the same things that we by our Choice and Industry do We ought from like Effects to conclude like Faculties and from greater Effects greater Faculties and consequently confess that the same Meditation and the very same Ways by which we operate are common with them or that they have others that are better Why should we imagine this natural Constraint in them who experiment no such effect in our selves Considering that it is more honorable to be guided and obliged to act regularly by a natural and irresistible Disposition and nearer ally'd to the Divinity than to act regularly by a temerarious and fortuitous Liberty and more safe to entrust the Reins of our Conduct in the Hands of Nature than our own The vanity of our Presumption is the Cause that we had rather own our Sufficiency to our own Industry than to her Bounty and that we enrich the other Animals with natural Goods and abjure them in their Favor to honor and enoble our selves with Goods acquired very foolishly in my Opinion so I should as much value Parts and Virtues naturally and purely my own as those I had begg'd and obtain'd from Education It is not in our Power to obtein a nobler Reputation than to be favoured of God and Nature For this Reason should we see the Fox the People of Thrace make use of when they will attempt to pass over the Ice of
not sometimes sleep Why should we be afraid to speak We see the Stoicks who are the Fathers of Human Prudence have found out that the Soul of Man crushed under a ruin does long labour and strive to get out like a Mouse caught in a Trap before it can disingage it self from the Burthen Some hold that the World was made to give Bodies by way of Punishment to the Spirits fallen by their own Fault from the Purity wherein they had been created The first Creation having been no other than incorporeal And that according as they are more or less deprav'd from their Spirituality so are they or more or less jocundly or dully incorporated And that thence proceeds all the Variety of so much created Matter But the Spirit that for his Punishment was invested with the Body of the Sun must certainly have a very rare and particular Measure of Thirst. The extremities of our Perquisition do all fall into and terminate in Astonishment and Blindness As Plutarch says of the Testimony of Histories that according to Charts and Maps the utmost Bounds of known Countries are taken up with Marishes impenetrable Forests Desarts and uninhabitable places And this is the reason why the most gross and childish Ravings were most found in those Authors who treat of the most elevated Subjects and proceed the furthest in them Losing themselves in their own Curiosity and Presumption The beginning and end of Knowledge are equally reputed Foolish Observe to what a pitch Plato flyes in his Poetick Clouds Do but take notice there of the Gibberish of the Gods But what did he dream of when he defin'd a Man to be a two begg'd Animal without Feathers Giving those who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion For having pull'd a Capon alive they call'd it the Man of Plato And what did the Epicureans think of out of what simplicity did they first imagine that their Atomes that they said were Bodies having some weight and a natural motion downwards had made the World Till they were put in mind by their Adversaries that according to this Description it was impossible they should unite and joyn to one another their fall being so direct and perpendicular and many so many parrallel Lines throughout Wherefore there was a necessity that they should since add a fortuitous and side-ways motion and that they should moreover accoutre their Atomes with hooked Tails by which they might afterwards unite and cling to one another And even then do not those that attack them upon this Second Invention put them hardly to it If the Atomes have by chance form'd so many sorts of Figures why did it never fall out that they made a House or a Shoe Why at the same rate should we not believe that an infinite Number of Greek Letters strow'd all over a certain place might possibly fall into the Contexture of the Iliad VVhatever is capable of Reason says Zeno is better than that which is not capable There is nothing better than the VVorld The VVorld is therefore capable of Reason Cotta by this way of Argumentation makes the VVorld a Mathematician And 't is also made a Musician and an Organist by this other Argumentation of Zeno The Whole is more than a Part we are capable of VVisdom and are part of the World Therefore the World is wise There are infinite like Examples not only of Arguments that are false in themselves but silly ones that do not hold in themselves and that accuse their Authors not so much of Ignorance as Impudence in the Reproaches the Philosophers dash one another in the Teeth withal upon the Dissentions in their Sects and Opinions Whoever should bundle up a lusty Faggot of the Fooleries of Human Wisdom would produce wonders I willingly muster up these few for a Pattern by a certain meaning not less profitable than the most moderate Instructions Let us judge by these what Opinion we are to have of Man of his Sense and Reason when in these great persons and that have raised Human Knowledge so high so many gross and manifest Errors and Mistakes are to be found For my part I am apt to believe that they have treated of Knowledge casually and like a Toy with both hands and have contended about Reason as of a vain and frivolous Instrument setting on foot all sorts of Fancies and Inventions sometimes more sinewy and sometimes weaker This same Plato who defines Man as if he were a Cock says elsewhere after Socrates that he does not in truth know what Man is and that he is a Member of the World the hardest to understand By this variety and instability of Opinions they tacitly lead us as it were by the hand to this Resolution of their Irresolution They profess not always to deliver their Opinions bare-fac'd and apparent to us they have one while disguis'd them in the fabulous Shadows of Poesie and another in some other Vizor For our Imperfection carries this also along with it that crude Meats are not always proper for our Stomachs they must dry alter and mix them They do the same They oft conceal their real Opinions and Judgments and falsifie them to accommodate themselves to the Publick Usance They will not make an open Profession of Ignorance and of the Imbecillity of Human Reason that they may not fright Children But they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a troubled and inconstant Science I advis'd a Person in Italy who had a great mind to speak Italian that provided he only had a desire to make himself understood without being ambitious to excel that he should only make use of the first words that came to the Tongues end whether Latin French Spanish or Gascon and that in adding the Italian Terminations he could not fail of hitting upon some Idiom of the Country either Thuscan Roman Venetian Piedmentois or Neapolitan and to apply himself to some one of those many Forms I say the same of Philosophy she has so many Faces so much Variety and has said so many things that all our Dreams and Ravings are there to be found Humane Fancy can conceive nothing good or bad that is not there Nihil tam absurdè dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo Philosophorum Nothing can be so absurdly said that has not been said before by some of the Philosophers And I am the more willing to expose my Whimsies to the Publick Forasmuch as though they are spun out of my self and without any Pattern I know they will be found related to some ancient Humour and some will not stick to say See whence he took it My Manners are Natural I have not call'd in the assistance of any Discipline to erect them But weak as they are when it came into my head to lay them open to the Worlds view and that to expose them to the Light in a little more decent Garb I went about to adorn them with Reasons and Examples It was
a Station by it self and separate it from Fortune for what is more accidental than Reputation Profecto Fortuna in omni re dominatur ea res cunctas ex libidine magis quam ex vero celebrat obscuratque Fortune rules in all things and does advance and depress things more out of her own Will than Right and Justice So to order it that Actions may be known and seen is purely the work of Fortune 't is Chance that helps us to glory according to its own temerity I have often seen her go along with Merit and often very much exceed it He that first liken'd Glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of They are both of them things excellently vain Glory also like a shadow goes sometimes before the Body and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it They that instruct Gentlemen only to employ their Valour for the obtaining of Honour Quasi non sit honestum quod nobilitatum non sit As though it were not a Vertue unless ennobled What do they intend by that but to instruct them never to hazard themselves if they are not seen and to observe well if there be Witnesses present who may carry News of their Valour whereas a thousand Occasions of well doing present themselves when we cannot be taken notice of How many brave Actions are buried in the crowd of a Battel Whoever shall take upon him to censure anothers Behaviour in such a Confusion is not very busie himself and the Testimony he shall give of his Companions Deportments will be Evidence against himself Vera sapiens Animi magnitudo honestum illud quod maxime naturam sequitur in factis positum non in Gloria judicat The true and wise magnanimity judges that the bravery which most follows Nature more consists in Act than Glory All the Glory that I pretend to derive from my Life is that I have liv'd it in quiet In quiet not according to Metrodorus Archesilans or Aristippus but according to my self for seeing Philosophy has not been able to find out any way to tranquility that is good in common let every one seek it in particular To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their Renown but to Fortune How many Men has she extinguish'd in the beginning of their Progress of whom we have no Knowledge who brought as much Courage to the Work as they if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the first sally of their Arms Amongst so many and so great Dangers I do not remember I have any where read that Caesar was ever wounded a thousand have fallen in less Dangers than the least of those he went through A great many brave Actions must be expected to be perform'd without Witness and so lost before one turn to account A man is not alwayes on the top of a Breach or at the head of an Army in the sight of his General as upon a Scaffold A man is oft surpris'd betwixt the Hedg and the Ditch he must run the hazard of his Life against a Hen-roost he must bolt four rascally Musketeers out of a Barn he must prick out single from his Party and alone make some Attempts according as Necessity will have it And whoever will observe will I believe find it experimentally true that Occasions of the least Lustre are ever the most dangerous and that in the Wars of our own Times there have more brave Men been lost in Occasions of little moment and in the dispute about some little paltery Fort than in Places of greater Importance and where their Valours might have been more honourably employ'd Who thinks his Death unworthy of him if he do not fall in some signal Occasions instead of illustrating his Death does willfully obscure his Life suffering in the mean time many very just Occasions of hazarding himself to slip out of his Hands And every just one is illustrious enough every mans Conscience being a sufficient Trumpet to him Gloria nostra est Testimonium Conscientiae nostrae For our rejoycing is this the Testimony of our Conscience Who is only a good Man that Men may know it and that he may be the better esteem'd when 't is known who will not do well but upon Condition that his Virtue may be known to Men is one from whom much Service is not to be expected Credo ch' el resto di quel verno cose Facesse degne di tener ne conto Ma fur fin à quel tempo si nascose Che non è colpa mia s'hor ' nor le conto Porche Orlando a far ' opre virtuose Piu ch'à narra le poi sempre era pronto Ne mai fu alcun ' de li suoi fatti espresso Senon quando hebbei testimonii appresso The rest o' th Winter I presume was spent In Actions worthy of eternal Fame Which at the end was so in Darkness pent That if I name them not I 'm not to blame Orlando's noble Mind being more bent To do great Acts than boast him of the same So that no Deeds of his were ever known But those that luckily had lookers on A Man must go to the War upon the account of Duty and expect the Recompence that never fails brave and worthy Actions how private and conceal'd soever not so much as Virtuous Thoughts 'T is the Satisfaction that a well dispos'd Conscience receives in it self to do well A Man must be valiant for himself and upon the account of the Advantage it is to him to have his Courage seated in a firm and secure place against the Assaults of Fortune Virtus repulsae nescia sordidae Intaminatis fulget honoribus Nec sumit aut ponit secures Arbitrio popularis aurae Virtue that n'ere Repulse admits In taintless honours glorious sits Nor takes or leaveth Dignities Rais'd with the Noise of vulgar Cries It is not for outward shew that the Soul is to play its part but for our selves within where no Eyes can pierce but our own there she defends us from the fear of Death of Pains and Shame it self she there arms us against the loss of our Children Friends and Fortunes and when Opportunity presents it self she leads us on to the Hazards of War Non emolumento aliquo sed ipsius honestatis decore Not for any Profit or Advantage but for the Decency of Virtue A much greater Advantage and more worthy to be coveted and hop'd for than Honour and Glory which is no other than the favourable Judgment is given of us A dozen men must be call'd out of a whole Nation to judge of an Acre of Land and the Judgment of our Inclinations and Actions the hardest and most important thing that is we refer to the Voice and determinations of the Rabble the Mother of Ignorance Injustice and Inconstancy Is it reasonable that the Life of a wise Man should depend upon the Judgment of Fools An quidquam stultius
they are rich in their own native Beauty and are able to justifie themselves the least end of a Hair will serve to draw them into my Argument Amongst others condemn'd by Philip Herodicus Prince of Thessaly had been one He had moreover after him caus'd his two Sons in Law to be put to Death each leaving a Son very young behind him Theoxena and Archo were their two Widows Theoxena though highly courted to it could not be perswaded to marry again Archo married Poris the greatest Man of the Aenians and by him had a great many Children which she dying left in a very tender Age. Theoxena mov'd with a Maternal charity towards her Nephews that she might have them under her own Eyes and in her own Protection married Poris when presently comes a Proclamation of the King's Edict This brave spirited Mother suspecting the cruelty of Philip and afraid of the Insolence of the Souldiers towards these fine and tender Children was so bold as to declare that she would rather kill them with her own hands than deliver them Poris startled at this Protestation promis'd her to steal them away and to Transport them to Athens and there commit them to the Custody of some faithful Friends of his They took therefore the opportunity of an Annual Feast which was celebrated at Aenia in Honour of Aeneas and thither they went Having appear'd by day at the Publick Ceremonies and Banquet they stole the Night following into a Vessel laid ready for the purpose to escape away by Sea The Wind prov'd contrary and finding themselves in the Morning within sight of the Land from whence they had launch'd over-night were made after by the Guards of the Port which Poris perceiving he labour'd all he could to make the Mariners do their utmost to escape from the Pursuers But Theoxena frantick with Affection and Revenge in pursuance of her former Resolution prepar'd both Arms and Poyson and exposing them before them Go to my Children said she Death is now the only means of your Defence and Liberty and shall administer occasion to the Gods to exercise their sacred Justice These sharp Swords and these full Cups will open you the way into it Courage fear nothing And thou my Son who art the eldest take this Steel into thy Hand that thou may'st the more bravely Dye The Children having on one side so powerfull a Counsellour and the Enemy at their Throats on the other ran all of them eagerly upon what was next to hand and half dead were thrown into the Sea Theoxena proud of having so gloriously provided for the safety of her Children clasping her Arms with great affection about her Husband's Neck Let us my Friend said she follow these Boys and enjoy the same Sepulchre they do And so embrac'd threw themselves head-long over-board into the Sea so that the Ship was carried back empty of the Owners into the Harbour Tyrants at once both to kill and to make their Anger felt have pump't their Wit to invent the most lingring Deaths They will have their Enemies dispatch'd but not so fast that they may not have leisure to taste their Vengeance And therein they are mightily perplex'd for if the Torments they inflict are violent they are short if long they are not then so painful as they desire and thus torment themselves in contriving how to torment others Of this we have a thousand Examples of Antiquity and I know not whether we unawares do not retain some traces of this Barbarity all that exceeds a simple Death appears to me absolute Cruelty neither can our Justice expect that he whom the fear of being executed by being Beheaded or Hang'd will not restrain should be any more aw'd by the imagination of a languishing Fire burning Pincers or the Wheel And I know not in the mean time whether we do not throw them into despair for in what condition can the Soul of a man expecting four and twenty hours together to be broken upon a Wheel or after the old way nail'd to a Cross be Josephus relates that in the time of the War the Romans made in Judea happening to pass by where they had three days before crucified certain Jews he amongst them knew three of his own Friends and obtained the favour of having them taken down of which two he says died the third liv'd a great while after Chalcondilas a Writer of good credit in the Records he has left behind him of things that happen'd in his time and near him tell us as of the most excessive Torment of that the Emperour Meckmed very often practis'd of cutting off men in the middle by the Diaphragma with one blow of a Cimeter by which it follow'd that they died as it were two Deaths at once and both the one part says he and the other were seen to stir and strive a great while after in very great Torment I do not think there was any great sufferance in this motion The Torments that are the most dreadful to look on are not always the greatest to endure and I find those that other Historians relate to have been practic'd upon the Epirot Lords to be more horrid and cruel where they were condemn'd to be flead alive by pieces after so malicious a manner that they continued fifteen days in this misery As also these other two following Croesus having caus'd a Gentleman the favourite of his Brother Pantaleon to be seized on carried him into a Fuller's Shop where he caus'd him to be scratch'd and carded with the Cards and Combs belonging to that Trade till he died George Jechel chief Commander of the Peasants of Polonia who committed so many Mischiefs under the Title of the Crusado being defeated in Battel and taken by the Vayvod of Transylvania was three days bound naked upon the Rack exposed to all sorts of Torments that any one could contrive against him during which time many other Prisoners were kept fasting in the end he living and looking on they made his beloved Brother Lucat for whom he only entreated taking upon himself the blame of all their evil Actions to drink his Blood and caused twenty of his most favour'd Captains to feed upon him tearing his flesh in pieces with their Teeth and swallowing the morsels The remainder of his Body and his Bowels so soon as he was dead were boyl'd and others of his followers compell'd to eat them CHAP. XXVIII All things have their Season SUch as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato that kill'd himself compare two beautiful Natures and much resembling one another The first acquir'd his Reputation several ways and excells in Military Exploits and the Utility of his publick Vocations but the Virtue of the younger besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to him in Vigour was much more pure and unblemish'd For who can acquit the Censor of Envy and Ambition having dar'd to justle the Honour of Scipio a man in Worth Valour and all other excellent Qualities
Incisions and Cauteries with so great constancy as never to be seen so much as to winch or stir 'T is something to bring the Soul to these imaginations more to joyn the effects and yet not impossible but to conjoyn them with such perseverance and constancy as to make them habitual is certainly in attempts so remote from the common usance almost incredible to be done Therefore it was that being one day taken in his House terribly scolding with his Sister and being reproach'd that he therein transgress'd his own Rules of indifference What said he must this foolish Woman also serve for a testimony to my Rules Another time being seen to defend himself against a Dog It is said he very hard totally to put off man and we must endeavour and force our selves to resist and encounter things first by Effects but at least by Reason About seven or eight years since a Husbandman yet living but two Leagues from my House having long been tormented with his Wifes Jealousie coming one day home from his work and she welcoming him with her accustomed railing entred into so great fury that with a Sickle he had yet in his hand he totally cut off all those Parts that she was jealous of and threw them in her face And 't is said that a young Gentleman of our Nation brisk and amorous having by his perseverance at last mollified the heart of a fair Mistress enrag'd that upon the point of fruition he found himself unable to perform and that non viriliter Iners senile penis extulerat caput so soon as ever he came home he depriv'd himself of it and sent it his Mistriss a cruel and bloody Victim for the expiation of his offence If this had been done upon mature consideration and upon the account of Religion as the Priests of Cybele did what should we say of so high an action A few dayes since at Bergerac within five Leagues of my House up the River Dordogne a Woman having over-night been beaten and abus'd by her Husband a cholerick ill-condition'd fellow resolv'd to escape from his ill usage at the price of her life and going so soon as she was up the next morning to visit her Neighbours as she was wont to do and having let some words fall of the recommendation of her Affairs she took a Sister of hers by the hand and led her to the Bridge whither being come as it were in jest without any manner of alteration in her Countenance there taking leave of her she threw her self headlong from the top into the River and was there drown'd That which is the most remarkable in this is that this resolution was a whole night forming in her head But it is quite another thing with the Indian Women for it being the custom there for the men to have many Wives and the best beloved of them to kill her self at her Husband's decease every one of them makes it the Business of her whole Life to obtain this Priviledge and gain this Advantage over her Companions and the good Offices they do their Husband 's aim at no other Recompence but to be preferr'd in accompanying him in Death Vbi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto Vxorum fusis stat pia turba comis Et certamen habent lethi quae viva sequatur Conjugium pudor est non licuisse mori Ardent victrices flammae pectora praebent Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris When to the pile they throw the kindling brand The pious Wives with Hair dishevell'd stand Striving which living shall accompany Her Spouse and are asham'd they may not dye Who are preferr'd their Breasts to flame expose And their scorch'd Lips to their dead Husbands close A certain Author of our times Reports that he has seen in those Oriental Nations this Custom in practice that not only the Wives bury themselves with their Husbands but even the Slaves he has enjoyed also which is done after this manner The Husband being dead the Widow may if she will but few will demand two or three Months respite wherein to order her Affairs The day being come she mounts on Horse-back dress'd as fine as at her Wedding and with a cheerful Countenance says she is going to sleep with her Spouse holding a Looking-glass in her left hand and an Arrow in the other Being thus conducted in pomp accompanied with her Kindred and Friends and a great concourse of People with great Joy she is at last brought to the publick Place appointed for such Spectacles This is a spacious Place in the midst of which is a Pit full of Wood and adjoyning to it a Mount raised four or five steps upon which she is brought and served with a magnificent Repast which being done she falls to Dancing and Singing and gives order when she thinks fit to kindle the Fire which being perform'd she Descends and taking the nearest of her Husband's Relations by the hand they walk together to the River close by where she strips her self stark naked and having distributed her Clothes and Jewels to her Friends plunges her self into the Water as if there to cleanse her self from her Sins comming out thence she wraps her self in a yellow Linnen of five and twenty Ells long and again giving her hand to this Kinsman of her Husband 's they return back to the Mount where she makes a Speech to the People and recommends her Children to them if she have any Betwixt the Pit and the Mount there is commonly a Curtain drawn to skreen the burning Furnace from their sight which some of them to manifest the greater Courage forbid Having ended what she has to say a Woman presents her with a Vessel of Oil wherewith to anoint her head and her whole Body which having done with she throws into the Fire and in an instant precipitates her self after Imediately the People throw a great many Billets and Logs upon her that she may not be long in dying and convert all their Joy into Sorrow and Mourning If they are Persons of meaner Condition the Body of the defunct is carried to the place of Sepulture and there plac'd sitting the Widdow kneeling before him embracing the dead Body and continue in this posture whilst they build a Wall about them which so soon as it is raised to the height of the Womans Shoulders some of her Relations comes behind her and taking hold of her Head writhe her Neck in two and so soon as she is dead the Wall is presently rais'd up and clos'd where they remain entomb'd There was in this same Country something like this in their Gymnosophist for not by constraint of others nor by the impetuosity of a sudden humour but by the express Profession of their Order their Custom was that so soon as they arriv'd at a certain Age or that they saw themselves threatned by any Disease to cause a funeral Pile to be erected for them and on the top a stately Bed
in the works of Nature some Qualities and Conditions that are imperceptible to us and of which our understanding cannot discover the means and causes by this honest Declaration we hope to obtain that People shall also believe us of those that we say we do understand We need not trouble our selves to seek out Miracles and strange Difficulties methinks there are so incomprehensible Wonders amongst the things that we ordinarily see as surpass all difficulties of Miracles What a wonderful thing it is that the drop of Seed from which we are produc'd should carry in it self the impression not only of the bodily Form but even of the Thoughts and Inclinations of our Fathers Where can that drop of Fluid matter contain that infinite number of Forms And how can they carry on these Resemblances with so temerarious and irregular a Progress that the Son shall be like his Great Grand-father the Nephew like his Uncle In the Family of Lepidus at Rome there were three not successively but by intervals that were born with the same Eye cover'd with a Cartilage At Thebes there was a Race that carried from their Mothers Womb the form of the head of a Launce and who was not born so was look'd upon as illegitimate And Aristotle says that in a certain Nation where the Women were in common they assign'd the Children to their Fathers by their resemblance 'T is to be believ'd that I derive this Infirmity from my Father for he died wonderfully tormented with a great Stone in his Bladder he was never sensible of his Disease till the sixty seventh year of his Age and before that had never felt any grudging or symptoms of it either in his Reins Sides or any other part and had liv'd till then in a happy vigorous state of Health little subject to Infirmities and continued seven years after in this Disease and died a very painful Death I was born above five and twenty years before his Disease seiz'd him and in the time of his most flourishing and healthful state of Body his third Child in order of Birth where could his propension to this Malady lye lurking all that while And he being so far from the Infirmity how could that small part of his Substance carry away so great an impression of its share And how so conceal'd that till five and forty years after I did not begin to be sensible of it being the only one to this hour amongst so many Brothers and Sisters and all of one Mother that was ever troubled with it He that can satisfie me in this point I will believe him in as many other Miracles as he pleases always provided that as their manner is he does not give me a Doctrine much more intricate and fantastick than the thing it self for current pay Let the Physicians a little excuse the Liberty I take for by this same infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I have receiv'd a hatred and contempt of their Doctrine The Antipathy I have against their Art is hereditary My Father liv'd threescore and fourteen years my Grandfather sixty nine my Great-Grandfather almost fourscore years without ever tasting any sort of Physick and with them whatever was not ordinary Diet was instead of a Drugg Physick is grounded upon Experience and Examples so is my Opinion And is not this an express and very advantageous Experience I do not know that they can find me in all their Records three that were born bred and dyed under the same Roof who have liv'd so long by their own Conduct They must here of Necessity confess that if Reason be not Fortune at least is on my side and with Physicians Fortune goes a great deal further than Reason let them not take me now at a disadvantage let them not threaten me in the subdu'd condition I now am for that were treachery And to say truth I have got enough the better of them by these domestick Examples that they should rest satisfied Humane things are not usually so constant it has been two hundred years save eighteen that this Tryal has lasted for the first of them was born in the Year 1402. 'T is now indeed very good reason that this Experience should begin to fail us let them not therefore reproach me with the Infirmities under which I now suffer is it not enough for my part that I have lived seven and forty years in perfect Health Though it should be the end of my career 't is of the longer sort My Ancestors had an aversion to Physick by some secret and natural instinct for the very sight of a Potion was loathsom to my Father The Seigneur de Gaviac my Uncle by the Father's side a Churchman and a Valetudinary from his Birth and yet that made that crazy Life to hold out to sixty seven years being once fall'n into a furious Fever it was order'd by the Physicians he should be plainly told that if he would not make use of help for so they call that which is very often quite contrary he would infallibly be a dead man The good man though terrified with this dreadful Sentence yet reply'd I am then a dead man But God soon after made the Prognostick false The youngest of the Brothers which were four and by many years the youngest the Sieur de Bussaget was the only man of the Family that made use of Medicine by reason I suppose of the commerce he had with the other Arts for he was a Counsellour in the Court of Parliament and it succeeded so ill with him that being in outward appearance of the strongest constitution he yet died before any of the rest the Sieur Saint Michel only excepted 'T is possible I may have deriv'd this natural Antipathy to Physick from them but had there been no other consideration in the case I would have endeavour'd to have overcome it For all conditions that spring in us without reason are vicious and is a kind of Disease that we are to wrestle with It may be I had naturally this Propension but I have supported and fortified it by Arguments and Reasons which have establish'd in me the Opinion I am of For I also hate the consideration of refusing Physick for the nauseous taste I should hardly be of that humour who find Health worth purchasing by all the most painful Cauteries and Incisions that can be apply'd And according to Epicurus I conceive that Pleasures are to be avoided if greater Pains be the consequence and Pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater Pleasures Health is a pretious thing and the only one in truth meriting that a man should lay out not only his time sweat labour and goods but also his Life it self to obtain it forasmuch as without it Life is injurious to us Pleasure Wisdom Learning and Virtue without it wither away and vanish and in the most queint and solid Discourses that Philosophy would imprint in us to the contrary we need no more but oppose the
persecute teaze and rifle those tender and obliging Favours This our immoderate and illegitimate Exasperation against this Vice springs from the most vain and turbulent Disease that afflicts humane Minds which is Jealousie Quis vetat apposito Lumen de lumine sumi Dent licet assiduè nil tamen inde perit That Light from Light be taken who 'll deny Though they do nought but give nought's lost thereby she and Envy her Sister seem to me to be the most idle and foolish of the whole Troop As to the last I can say little to 't a Passion that though said to be so mighty and powerful had never to do with me As to the other I know it by sight and that 's all Beasts feel it The Shepherd Cratis being fall'n in love with a She-Goat the He out of jealously came to butt him as he was laid a sleep and beat out his Brains We have rais'd this Fever to a greater excess by the Examples of some barbarous Nations the best disciplin'd have been touch'd with it and 't is reason but not transported Ense maritali nemo confessus Adulter Purpureo Stygias Sanguine tinxit aquas Ne're did Adulterer by a Husband slain With purple Blood the Stygian Waters stain Lucullus Caesar Pompey Antonius Cato and other brave men were Cuckolds and knew it without making any bustle about it There was in those days but one Coxcomb Lepidus that died for Grief that his Wife had us'd him so Ah! tum te miserum malique fati Quem attractis pedibus patente porta Percurrent mugilesque raphanique And the God of our Poet when he surpriz'd one of his Companions with his Wife satisfied himself with putting them to shame only Atque aliquis de Diis non tristibus optat Sic fieri turpis they shamefully lay bound Yet one a wanton wish'd to be so found and nevertheless took fire at the soft embraces she gave him complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his Affection Quid causas petis ex alto fiducia cessit Quo tibi Diva mei What need'st thou doubt and make a question thus Where is your Confidence repos'd in us Nay she entreats Arms for a Bastard of hers Arma rogo genitrix nato Another for her Son does Armour crave which are freely granted and Vulcan speaks honourably of Aeneas Arma acri facienda viro Arms for a valiant Hero must be made with in truth a more than humane Humanity And I am willing to leave this excess of Bounty to the Gods Nec divis homines componere aequum est Nor is it fit to equal men with Gods As to the confusion of Children besides that the gravest Legislators ordain and affect it in their Republicks it nettles not the Women where this Passion is I know not how much better seated Saepe etiam Juno maxima Caelicolam Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana And Juno with fierce jealousie inflam'd Her Husband 's daily slips has often blam'd When Jealousie seizes these poor weak and resistless Souls 't is pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannizes over them it insinuates it self into them under the title of Friendship but after it has once possess'd them the same causes that serv'd for a foundation of good Will serve them for a foundation of mortal Hatred 't is of all the diseases of the Mind that which most things serve for Aliment and fewest for Remedy The Virtue Health Merit and Reputation of the Husband are the Incendiaries of their Fury and ill Will Nullae sunt inimicitiae nisi amoris acerbae Their Anger 's are but the effects of Love This Fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good besides And there is no action of a jealous Woman let her be how chaste and how good a Housewife soever that does not relish of Anger and Rudeness 'T is a furious Agitation that rebounds them to an Extremity quite contrary to its Cause Which was very manifest in one Octavius at Rome who having lain with Pontia Posthumia found his love so much augmented by Fruition that he sollicited with all importunity to marry her which seeing he could not persuade her to this excessive Affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and mortal hatred for he kill'd her In like manner the ordinary symptoms of this other amorous Disease are intestine Hatreds private Conspiracies and Conjurations Notumque furens quid foemina possit The cause unknown But that a desp'rate Woman carry'd on With Rage might do and a Rage which so much the more frets it self as it is compell'd to excuse it self by a pretence of good Will Now the duty of Chastity is of a vast Extent Is it their Wills that we would have them restrain That is a very pliant and active thing a thing very quick and nimble to be staid How if Dreams sometimes ingage them so far that they cannot deny them It is not in them nor peradventure in Chastity it self seeing it is a Female to defend it self from Lust and Desire If we are only interested in their Will what a case are we in then Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst Men in pursuance of these Priviledges to run full speed though without Tongue and Eyes into every Womans Arms that would accept them The Scythian Women put out the Eyes of all their Slaves and Prisoners of War that they might have their Pleasure of them and they never the wiser Oh the furious advantage of Opportunity Should any one ask me what was the first part of Love I should Answer that it was how to take a man's time and so the second and so the third 't is a point that can do every thing I have sometimes wanted Fortune but I have also sometimes been wanting to my self in matter of Attempt There is greater Temerity requir'd in this Age of ours which our young People excuse under the name of heat But should Women examin it more strictly they would find that it rather proceeded from Contempt I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence and have ever had a great respect for her I lov'd Besides who in this traffick takes away the Reverence defaces at the same time the Lustre I would in this Affair have a Man a little play the Child the Timorous and the Servant If not altogether in this I have in other things some air of the foolish bashfulness whereof Plutarch makes mention and the course of my Life has been divers ways hurt and blemish'd with it a Quality very ill suiting my universal Form And what is there also amongst us but Sedition and Discord I am as much our of Countenance to be deny'd as I am to deny and it so much troubles me to be troublesome to others that in occasions where Duty compells to try the good-will of any one in a thing that is
Cicero Lucaeâ— 4. Ovid. Epist. Aniad Seneca Cicero de â—in l. 2. Luc. lib. 9. Cicero Cicero de fin Aug. de Civit Dei Cicero Thus. l. 2. Tib. lib. 1. Eleg. 9. Cicero Cat. Epig. 4 Seu. Provid Sen. Ep. 47. Cicero Parad. Ulti Ibid. Cicero Thus. lib. 2. Tasso Canâ—â— 10. Aug. de Civet Dei Terenee Phor. Act. 5 Sâ—e 3. Juvenal Sat. 8. Horace lib. 1. Sat. 2. Ed. lib. 2. Sat. 7. Plaut Tri. Act. 2. Sce. 2. Luere lib. 2. Lucre. lib. 4. Senec. Ep. 115. Horace lib. 2. Ode 16. Lucre. lib. 2. Idem Perseus Sat. 2. Ter. Heart Act. 1. Sce. Horace lib. 1. Epist. 2. Hor. lib. 1. El. 2. Hor. lib. 1. Ep. 12. Lucret. lib. 5. Ovid. Amâ—â— l. 2. Ele. 19. Hor. ear lib. 3. Ode 29. Seneca Thiest Act. 2. Scae. 1. Lucret. l. 5. Corn. Nep. in vit A. Hici. Quinct Decla 4. Aeneid lib. 12. Aeneid lib. 4. Juvenal Saly 10. Homer Iliads 20. Petrar Son 83. Luc. lib. 7. Porti Lat. in Decla Luc. lib. 4. Maye's Luc. * As at the Battel of Ivry in the person of Henry the Great Manil. Astron lib. 4· Livius l. 23 â—vi l. 3. Caesars Com. Virg. Aneid lib. 10. Lucan l. 8. Mr. Mrys Trans Virg. Aenei 9. Livi. l. 38. Id. ibid. Id. ibid. Aeneid l. 4. Livel 35. Mart. l. 2. Livi. l. 40. Caesar de bello civili lib. 1. Mart lib. 2. Epig. 62. Id. lib. 6. Epi. 93. Aeneid l. 2. Ovid. de pont lib. 4. Eleg. 9. Mart. lib. 11. Epist. 50. Lucret. l. 4. Mart. l. 7. Epig. 47. Plut. vit Tit. Quint. Flaminius Mart. lib. â— Epig. 34. Hor. lib. 1. Sat. 5. Suet. in vita Cae. Id. eod not quoted by Montaigne Hor. lib. 7. Ode 11. Persius Sat. 1. Juven Sat. 10. Juven â—at 5. Ter. Adelph Act. 3. Scae. 5. Lucret. l. 3. Lucret. l. 6. Plaut Mostel Art 1. Sce. 3. Ben. Johnson Martial li. 6. Ep. 55. Id. lib. 2. Ep. 12. Hor. Ep. 12. Juven Sat. 8. Perse. Sat. ◠〈◊〉 Ibid. Lucan l. 5. Perseus Sat. 2. Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 10. Hor. l. 3. Ode 23. Lucret. l. 3. Irresolution the most common Vice of our Nature Aulus Gel. ex Pub. Min. Instability of our manners and opinions Augustus Hor. l. 1. G. 1. Id. lib. 2. Sat. 7. Lucret. lib. 3. Cicero A Maid threw her self out of a window for fear of a Rape Hor. lib. 2. Ep. 2. Id. Ibid. Cicero Tusc. 2. The Valour of Alexander extream in its kind Cicer. Sen. Epist. 120. Tib. lib. 2. Erg. 1. Hor. lib. 1. Sat. 3. The Germans great Drinkers Lucret. lib. 3. Virg. Egâ— 6. Juveâ— Sat. 13. Cornel. Gall. Epig. 1. Horace lib. 3. Ode 21. Drinking to a debauch in Vse amongst the best governed Nations Delicacy to be avoided in Wine A Character of the Authors Father Marvellous Chastity of the Age wherein the Authors Father lived One of the names of Bacchus Hor. lib. 3. Ode 23. Lucret. lib. 3. Terence Virg. 6. Cicero Tusc. l. 5. Aenied l. 4. To Philosophize what Several Accidents worse to suffer than Death Senec. The. Act. 1. Sca. 1. Death depends upon the Will Aeneid lib. 6. Hor. lib. 4. Ode 4. Sen. Th. Act. 1. Scen. 1. Mart. lib. 11. Epig. 57. Hor. lib. 3. Ode 3. Mar. lib. 2. Epig. 80. Lucan lib. 7. Lucret. lib. 3. Ignominious sepulture of self homicides Idem Ibid. Sulpitii Servasti Josep Antiq Jews p. 537. Montluc Comment Sen. Ep. 13. Aeneid lib. 11. Macchab. l. 2. Cap. 14. The utility of the French Plutarch Negligence the opposite vice to Curiosity Juven Sat. 13. Strange discovery of a Parricide Erasm. Adag Virg. Geâ— lib. 4. Lucret. lib. 5. Juven Sat. 13. Ovid. Fast. lib. 1. The confident innocency of Scipio Pub. Sy. min. de dolore Lucret. lib. 3. Luc. lib. â— Sleep the Image of Death Tâ—sso Cant. â—â— Tasso Cant. 8. Lucret. lib. 3. Ovid Tust lib. 1. Eleg. 3. Aeneid lib. 4. Id. lib. 10. Lucret. lib. 3. Ovid. Trist. lib. 1. Eleg. 3. Orders of Knighthood instituted to reward Military Vertue The Order of Saint Michel Mart. lib. 2. Epig. 82. Valour of the Citizens of Sparta The Order of the Holy Ghost The affection of Parents towards their Children greater than that of Children towards them and why Young men given to filching Gascon 's generally addicted to stealing Terence Adelph Act. 1. Sâ—e 1. The Age of Marriage The Vse of Women enervates young Men Tasso Cant. 10. Hor. lib. 1. Ep. 1. Ter. Adel. ac 4. Scen. 2. The Author seems to hint that the Judges were young Men themselves The ancient Gauls nâ—ver permitted their Sons to present themselves before them till they came to bear Arms. The Saâ—ick Law never seen by any Goats trained to give suck to Children Books immortal Children His Romance of Theagines and Cariclea Cordus 's Writings condemn'd to the Fire Ovid. Meta lib. 10. Li. lib. 5. Aeneid lib. 6. Aristo Cant. 12. Arms of the Roman Infantry and their Militiary Discipline Cicero Thus lib. 2. Arms of the Parthians Claud. in Ruff. lib. 2. Prob. lib. 4. Eleg. 1. Censure of Virgil And Lucan Of Terence Of Lucretius Catullus Epig. 40. Of Terence Comparison betwixt Catullus and Martial Mart. prae lib. 8. Virg. Georg. 4. The Characters of Plutarch and Seneca Censure of Cicero And of Plato Cicero de Sencet Caesar's Com. commended Froissard Censure of Guicciardin And of Philip de Commines Inclinations to Goodness Thai Vertue cannot be exercised without some difficulty Sen. Epist. 25. The Vertue of Socrates The noble Death of Cato accompanied with Pleasure Cicero Thuse lib. 1. * Caesar. Hor. lib. 1. Ode 37. Cicero de Offic. lib. 1. Vertue turn'd into Habit in Cato and Socrates Italians subtile and quick of Apprehension Germans and Suisses Loggerheads Aeneid 11 Horat. lib. 1. Sat. 6. Horat. lib. 2. Ode 17. Ju. sat 8. The Pleasure of the Chace What Hor. Ep. 2. Julius Caesar 's Clemency St. Luke Chap. 12. v. 40. The severe Laws of Persia moderated by Artaxerxes Hogs Sacrificed in Figure to the Divine Justice by the Egyptians The Cruelties exercised in Civil Wars Sen. de Clem. Aeneid l. 7. Beasts brought alive by Pythagoras to turn out Ovid. Met. lib. 15. Pythagoras his Transmutation of Souls Id ibid. Clad in Ruff. lib. 2. Ovid. Met. lib. 15. Beasts rever'd for Gods by some of the Ancients Juven sat 15. Learning brought in to esteem by Francis the First in France Sebonde Lucr. lib. 5. What Books are proper to translate Object against Sebonde 's Book the first The marvellous effects of lively Faith Incerto Vertue the particular mark of Christian Religion God assists our Faith and Religion not our Passions Proposition Whether it be Lawful to take Arms against the King in defence of Religion Lucret. 13. Bion an Atheist What Atheism is Divinity imprinted on the outward Fabrick of the World The World a Sacred Temple Manil. l. 4 Wisdom only belongs to the Divinity Heroicum Adagium 1 Pet. 55. The Wisdom of the World folly