is neither Evil nor Torment of it self but only that our Fancy gives it that Quality and makes it so it is in us to change and alter it and it being in our own choice if there be no constraint upon us we must certainly be very strange Fools to take Arms for that side which is most offensive to us and to give Sickness Want and contempt a nauseous tast if it be in our power to give them a more graceful Relish and if Fortune simply providing the matter 't is for us to give it the form Now that which we call Evil is not so of it self or at least to that degree that we make it and that it depends upon us to give it another tast or complexion for all comes to one let us examine how that can be maintain'd If the original being of those things we fear had power to lodge themselves in us by their own authority it would then lodge it self alike and in like manner in all for Men are all of the same kind and saving in greater and less proportions are all provided with the same utensils and instruments to conceive and to judge but the diversity of opinions we have of those things does clearly evidence that they only enter us by composition One particular Person peradventure admits them in their true being but a thousand others give them a new and contrary being in them We hold Death Poverty and Grief for our principal Enemies but this Death which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things who does not know that others call it the only secure Harbour from the Storms and Tempests of Life The Soveraign good of Nature the sole Support of Liberty and the Common and sudden Remedy of all Evils And as the one expect it with Fear and Trembling the other support it with greater Ease than Life That Blade complains of its facility Mors utinam pavidos vitae subducere nolles Sed virtus te sola daret O Death I would thou wouldst the Coward spare That but the daring none might the conferr But let us leave these Glorious Courages Theodorus answer'd Lysimachus who threatned to Kill him thou wilt do a brave thing said he to arrive at the force of a Cantharides The greatest part of Philosophers are observ'd to have either purposely prevented or hastned and assisted their own Death How many ordinary people do we see led to Execution and that not to a simple Death but mixt with Shame and sometimes with grievous Torments appear with such assurance what through obstinacy or natural simplicity that a Man can discover no change from their ordinary condition Setling their Domestick affairs recommending them to their Friends Singing Preaching and Diverting the People so much as sometimes to Sally into Jests and to Drink to their Companions as well as Socrates One that they were leading to the Gallows told them they must not carry him through such a Street lest a Merchant that lived there should Arrest him by the way for an old Debt Another told the Hangman he must not touch his Neck for fear of making him Laugh he was so Ticklish Another answer'd his Confessor who promised him he should that day Sup with our Lord. Do you go then said he in my Room for I for my part keep fast to day Another having call'd for Drink and the Hangman having Drank first said he would not Drink after him for fear of catching the Pox. Every body has heard the Tale of the Picard to whom being upon the Ladder they presented a Whore telling him as our Law does sometimes permit that if he would Marry her they would save his Life he having a while considered her and perceiving that she Halted Come tye up tye up said he she limps And they tell another Story of the same kind of a fellow in Denmark who being condemn'd to lose his Head and the like condition being propos'd to him upon the Scaffold refus'd it by reason the Maid they offer'd him had hollow Cheeks and too sharp a Nose A Servant at Tholouse being accus'd of Heresie for the summ of his Belief referr'd himself to that of his Master a young Student Prisoner with him choosing rather to dye than suffer himself to be perswaded that his Master could err We read that of the inhabitants of Arras when Lewis the eleventh took that City a great many let themselves be Hang'd rather than they would say God Save the King And amongst that mean-soul'd race of Men the Buffoons there having been some who would not leave their Fooling at the very moment of Death He that the Hangman turn'd off the Ladder cry'd Launch the Galley an ordinary foolish saying of his and the other whom at the point of Death his Friends having laid upon a Pallet before the Fire the Physician asking him where his Pain lay betwixt the Bench and the Fire said he and the Priest to give him the extream Unction Groping for his Feet which his Pain had made him pull up to him you will find them said he at the end of my Legs To one that being present exhorted him to recommend himself to God why who goes thither said he and the other replying it will presently be your self if it be his good pleasure would I were sure to be there by to morrow Night said he do but recommend your self to him said the other and you will soon be there I were best then said he to carry my recommendations my self In the Kingdom of Narsingua to this day the Wives of their Priests are buried alive with the Bodies of their Husbands all other Wives are burnt at their Husbands Funerals which also they do not only constantly but chearfully undergo At the death of their King his Wives and Concubines his Favourites all his Officers and Domestick servants which make up a great number of people present themselves so chearfully to the Fire where his Body is burnt that they seem to take it for a singular honour to accompany their Master in death During our late War of Milan where there hapned so many takings and re-takings of Towns the people impatient of so many various changes of Fortune took such a resolution to dye that I have heard my Father say he there saw a List taken of five and twenty Masters of Families that made themselves away in one weeks time An accident somewhat resembling that of the Zanthians who being besieg'd by Brutus precipitated themselves Men Women and Children into such a furious appetite of dying that nothing can be done to evade death they did not put in practice to avoid life insomuch that Brutus had much ado to save but a very small number Every opinion is of force enough to make it self to be espoused at the expence of life The first Article of that valiant Oath that Greece took and observ'd in the Median War was that every one should sooner exchange life for death than their own Laws for
it overflowed to the Neighbouring Villages where by Use several Latin Appellations of Artizans and their Tools have got footing and there remain to this day For his part he was above six years old before he understood any more of French or Perigordin than of Arabick and without Art Books Grammar or Precepts without Whipping and without Tears he had learn't to speak as pure Latin as his Master for he could neither alter it nor mix it If for Example they gave him a Theam after the Colledge Mode they gave it to others in French but they were fain to give it him in ill Latin to put it into good And Nicholas Gronchi who has writ a Book de Comitiis Romanorum Guiliaume Guerente who has writ a Commentary upon Aristotle George Buchanan that great Scotch Poet and Mark Anthony de Mureta whom both France and Italy acknowledge for the best Orator of his Time his Domestick Tutors have oft since told him that he had that Language in his Childhood so ready and at hand they were afraid to accost him As to the Greek his Father design'd to have it taught him by Art but by a new Method and that by way of Sport and Recreation they tost their Declensions to and fro after the manner of those who by certain Tricks upon the Chess-board learn Arithmetick and Geometry so amongst other things he had been advis'd to make him relish Learning and Duty by an unforc'd Will and his own Device and to Educate his Soul with all Sweetness and Liberty without Austerity or Compulsion Which he also did to such a degree of Superstition that seeing some are of Opinion that it troubles the Brain of Children to be suddenly rows'd in a Morning and to be snatch't away from sleep wherein they are much deeper plung'd than men with haste and violence he always caused him to be waked by the sound of some Musical Instrument and was never unprovided of a Musician for that purpose But as they who are impatient to be cur'd submit to all sorts of Remedies and every ones Advice the good Man being extreamly timorous of failing in a thing he had so much set his Heart upon suffered himself at last to be carried away by the common Opinion which like Cranes always follow that which went before and submitted to Custom having now no more those Persons about him who had given him the first Instructions that he had brought out of Italy And about the sixth Year of his Age sent him to the Colledge of Guyenne at that time very flourishing and the best in France And there it was not possible to add any thing to the Care he had in choosing for him the best Chamber-Tutors and in all other Circumstances of Education wherein he reserv'd several particular Forms contrary to the Colledge Usance but so it was that it was a Colledge still and this unusual method of Education was here of no greater advantage to him than at his first coming to prefer him to one of the higher Classes for at thirteen Years of Age he had run thorough his whole Course At the Age of three and thirty he married a Wife though might he have been left free to his own Choice he would have avoided marrying even Wisdom her self had she been willing But 't is to much purpose says he to resist Custom and the common Usance of Life will have it so Nevertheless this Marriage of his was not Spontaneous he was put upon it and led to it by odd Accidents And as great a Libertine as he confesses himself to be he more strictly observ'd his Matrimonial Vow than he expected from or had propos'd to himself His Father left him Montaigne in Partage as the eldest of his Sons Prophecying that he would Ruine it considering his Humour so little dispos'd to live at home But he was deceiv'd for he liv'd upon it as he entred into it excepting that it was something better and yet without Office or any other Forreign helps As to the rest if Fortune never did him any violent or extraordinary Offence so she never shewed him any signal Favour Whatever he had in his House that proceeded from her Liberality was there before he came to it and above a hundred Years before his Time He never in his own particular had any solid and essential Advantages for which he stood indebted to her Bounty She shew'd him Airy Honorary and Titular Favours without Substance She procur'd for him the Collar of the Order of St. Michael which when young he coveted above all other things it being at that time the utmost mark of Honour of the French Nobless and very Rare But of all her Favours there was none with which he was so well pleas'd as an Authentick Bull of a Roman Burgess that was granted to him with great civility and bounty in a Journey he made to Rome which is transcrib'd in Form in the sixth Chapter of the third Book of his Essays Messieurs de Bourdeaux elected him Mayor of their City being then out of the Kingdom and at Rome and yet more Remote from any such Expectation which made him excuse himself but that would not serve his turn and moreover the King interpos'd his Command 'T is an Office that ought to be look'd upon with the greatest Esteem as it has no other Perquisits and Benefits belonging to it than the meer honour of its Execution It lasts but two years but may by a second Election be continued longer though that rarely happens It was to him and had been so twice before once some years since to Monsieur de Lausac and more lately to Monsieur de Byron Mareschal of France in whose place he succeeded and left his to Monsieur de Matiguon also Mareschal of France proud of so noble a Fraternity His Father a Man of great Honour and Equity had formerly also had the same Dignity All the Children his Wife brought died at Nurse saving Leonor an only Daughter whom he dispos'd in marriage some two Years before his Death The first printing of his Essaies was in the Year 1580 at which time the publick Applause gave him as he says a little more assurance than he expected He has since added but corrected nothing His Book having been always the same saving that upon every new Impression he took the Priviledge to add something that the Buyer might not go away with his Hands quite empty His Person was strong and well knit his Face not fat but full his Complexion betwixt Jovial and Melancholick moderately Sanguine and hot his Constitution healthful and spritely rarely troubled with Diseases till he grew into Years that he begun to be afflicted with the Cholick and Stone As to the rest very obstinate in his hatred and contempt of Physicians Prescriptions an hereditary Antipathy his Father having liv'd threescore and fourteen Years his Grandfather threescore and nine and his great Grand-father almost fourscore Years without having ever tasted any sort of
and declar'd that Thirty Years Old was sufficient for a Judg. Survius Tullius superceded the Knights of above Seven and Forty Years of Age from the Fatigues of War Augustus dismiss'd them at Forty Five Though methinks it seems a little unlikely that Men should be sent to the Fire-side till Five and Fifty or Sixty Years of Age. I should be of Opinion that both our Vacancy and Employment should be as far as possible extended for the Publick Good But I find the fault on the other side that they do not employ us Early enough This Emperour was Arbiter of the whole World at Nineteen and yet would have a Man to be Thirty before he could be fit to bear Office in the Common-wealth For my part I believe our Souls are Adult at Twenty such as they are ever like to be and as capable then as ever A Soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its Force and Vertue will never after come to proof Natural Parts and Excellencies produce that they have of Vigorous and Fine within that Term or never Of all the great Humane Actions I ever Heard or Read of of what sort soever I have Observ'd both in former Ages and our own more perform'd before the Age of Thirty than after And oft-times in the very Lives of the same Men. May I not confidently instance in those of Hannibal and his great concurrent Scipio The better half of their Lives they Liv'd upon the Glory they had Acquir'd in their Youth great Men after 't is true in comparison of others but by no means in comparison of themselves As to my own particular I do certainly believe that since that Age both my Understanding and my Constitution have rather decay'd than improv'd and retir'd rather than advanc'd 'T is possible that with those who make the best use of their Time Knowledg and Experience may grow up and encrease with their Years but the Vivacity Quickness and Steadiness and other peices of us of much greater Importance and much more Essentially our own Languish and Decay Vbi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus obstusis ceciderunt viribus artus Claudicat ingenium delirat linquaque mensque When once the Body 's shaken by Times Rage The Blood and Vigour Ebbing into Age The Judgment then Halts upon either Hip The Mind does Doat Tongue into Non-sense Trip. Sometimes the Body first submits to Age sometimes the Soul and I have seen enow who have got a Weakness in their Brains before either in their Hams or Stomach And by how much the more it is a Disease of no great pain to the infected Party and of obscure Symptoms so much greater the danger is And for this reason it is that I complain of our Laws not that they keep us too long to our Work but that they set us to work too late For the Frailty of Life consider'd and to how many Natural and Accidental Rubs it is Obnoxious and Expos'd Birth though Noble ought not to share so large a Vacancy and so tedious a course of Education The End of the First Book 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 New rendred into English By CHARLES COTTON Esq The Second Volume LONDON Printed for T. Basset at the George in Fleet-street and M. Gilliflower and W. Hensman in Westminster-Hall 1686. THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS OF THE Second Book Chap. 1. OF the Inconstancy of our Actions Pag. 1 Chap. 2. Of Drunkenness 14 Chap. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea 30 Chap. 4. To Morrow's a new Day 55 Chap. 5. Of Conscience 59 Chap. 6. Vse makes Perfectness 66 Chap. 7. Of Recompences of Honour 84 Chap. 8. Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children 90 Chap. 9. Of the Arms of the Parthians 123 Chap. 10. Of Books 129 Chap. 11. Of Cruelty 151 Chap. 12. Apology for Raimond de Sebonde 159 Chap. 13. Of Judging of the Death of another 435 Chap. 14. That the Mind hinders it self p. 446 Chap. 15. That our Desires are augmented by Difficulties 447 Chap. 16. Of Glory 457 Chap. 17. Of Presumption 479 Chap. 18. Of Giving the Lye 532 Chap. 19. Of Liberty of Conscience 540 Chap. 20. That we taste nothing pure 546 Chap. 21. Against Idleness 551 Chap. 22. Of Posts 558 Chap. 23. Of ill Means employed to a good End 560 Chap. 24. Of the Roman Grandeur 566 Chap. 25. Not to counterfeit being sick 569 Chap. 26. Of Thumbs 572 Chap. 27. Cowardize the Mother of Cruelty 574 Chap. 28. All Things have their Season 589 Chap. 29. Of Vertue 593 Chap. 30. Of a monstrous Child 605 Chap. 31. Of Anger 607 Chap. 32. Defence of Seneca and Plutarch 619 Chap. 33. The Story of Spurina 630 Chap. 34. Observation of the Means to carry on a War according to Julius Caesar. 642 Chap. 35. Of three good Women 656 Chap. 36. Of the most excellent Men. 668 Chap. 37. Of the Resemblance of Children to their Fathers 680 ESSAYS OF Michael Seigneur de Montaigne The Second Book CHAP. I. Of the Inconstancy of our Actions SUch as make it their business to controul humane Actions do not find themselves in any thing so much perplext as to reconcile them and bring them into the Worlds eye with the same Lustre and Reputation for they do commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible they should proceed from one and the same Person We find the younger Marius one while a Son of Mars and another the Son of Venus Pope Boniface the Eighth entred says one into his Papacy like a Fox behaved himself in it like a Lyon and died like a Dog And who could believe it to be the same Nero the perfect Image of all Cruelty who having the Sentence of a condemned man brought to him to Sign cried out O that I had never been taught to Write So much it went to his heart to condemn a man to Death All Story is full of such Examples and every man is able to produce so many to himself or out of his own practice or observation that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give themselves the trouble of sorting these pieces considering that irresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest Vice of our Nature Witness the famous Verse of the Player Publius Malum consilium est quod mutari non potest That Counsel's ill that will admit no change There is some possibility of forming a judgment of a man from the most usual methods of his life but considering the natural Instability of our manners and opinions I have often thought even the best Authors a little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and solid Contexture They chuse a general Air of a man and according to that interpret
life which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying are of no manner of advantage to us That man evades war to very little purpose that can have no fruition of peace and as impertinently does he avoid labour and toile who cannot enjoy repose Amongst those of the first of these two opinions there has been great debate what occasions are sufficient to justifie the meditation of self-murther which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a handsome Exit For though they say that men are often to dye for trivial causes seeing those that deteine us in life are of no very great weight yet there is to be some measure There are fantastick and sencelesse humors that have prompted not only particular men but whole Nations to destroy themselves of which I have elsewhere given some examples and we further read of the Milesian virgins that by a furious compact they hang'd themselves one after another till the Magistrate took order in it enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hang'd should be drawn by the same halter starke naked through the City When Threicion persuaded Cleomenes to dispatch himself by reason of the ill posture of his affairs and having evaded a death of the most honor in the battail he had lost to accept of this the second in honor to it and not to give the Conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death or an infamous life Cleomenes with a courage truly Stoick and Lacedaemonian rejected his Counsel as unmanly and poor that said he is a remedy that can never be wanting and which a man is never to make use of whilst there is an inch of hope remaining telling him that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live that he would that even his death should be of use to his Country and would make of it an act of honor and vertue Threicion notwithstanding thought himself in the right and did his own business and Cleomenes after did the same but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune All the inconvenences in the world are not considerable enough that a man should die to evade them and besides there being so many so suddain and unexpected changes in humane things it is hard rightly to judg when we are at the end of our hope Sperat in saeva victus gladiator arena Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax The fencer conquer'd in the lists hopes on Though the Spectators point that he is gon All things says the old Adage are to be hop'd for by a man whilst he lives ay but replies Seneca why should this rather be always running in a mans head that Fortune can do all things for the living man than this that Fortune has no power over him that knows how to dye Josephus when engag'd in so near and apparent danger a whole People being violently bent against him that there was no visible means of escape neverthelesse being as himself says in this extreamity counsell'd by Simon one of his faithful Guards to dispatch himself it was well for him that he yet maintain'd himself in some hope for fortune diverted the accident beyond all humane expectation so that he saw himself deliver'd without any manner of inconvenience Whereas Brutus and Cassius on the contrary threw away the remains of the Roman liberty of which they were the sole Protectors by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they kill'd themselves before the due time and a just occasion Monsieur d' Anguien at the Battel of Cerisolles twice attempted to run himself through despairing of the fortune of the day which went indeed very untowardly on that side of the Feild where he was engag'd and by that precipitation was very near depriving himself of the joy and honor of so brave a Victory I have seen a hundred Hares escape out of the very teeth of the Grey-hounds Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit Some have surviv'd their Executioners Multa dies variúsque labor mutabilis aevi Rettulit in melius multos alterna revisens Lusit in solido rursus fortuna locavit Much time and labour often does translate Life's mutability t' a better state Now fortune turning shews a reverse face And then again in solid joy does place Pliny says there are three sorts of diseases to escape any of which a man has good title to destroy himself the worst of which is the stone in the bladder when the urine is supprest Seneca says those only which for a long time discompose the functions of the Soul And some there have been who to avoid a worse have chosen one to their own liking Democritus General of the Aetolians being brought prisoner to Rome found means to make his escape by night but close pursu'd by his keepers rather than suffer himself to be retaken he fell upon his own sword and died Antinous and Theodotus their City of Epirus being reduct by the Romans to the last extremity gave the People counsel generally to kill themselves but the advice of giving themselves up to the armes of the Enemy prevayling they went to seek the death they desir'd rushing furiously upon the Enemy with an intention to strike home but not to defend a blow The Isle Gosa forc't some years ago by the Turks a Sicilian who had two beautiful daughters marriagable kill'd them both with his own hand and their mother running in to save them to boot Which having done sallying out of the House with a cros-bow and a harquebuze with those two shoots he kill'd two of the first Turks nearest to his door and drawing his sword charg'd furiously in amongst the rest where he was suddainly enclos'd and cut to peices By that means delivering his family and himself from slavery and dishonor The Jewish women after having circumciz'd their Children threw themselves down a Precipice to avoid the cruelty of Antigonus I have been told of a prisoner of condition in one of our prisons that his friends being inform'd he would certainly be condemn'd to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborn'd a Preist to tell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himself to such a Saint under such and such vowes and fast eight days togeather without taking any manner of nourishment what ever what weakeness or faintness so ever he might find in himself during the time he follow'd their advice and by that means destroid himself before he was aware not dreaming of death or any danger in the Experiment Scribonia advising her Nephew Libo to kill himself rather than to attend the stroke of Justice told him that it was properly to do others Peoples business to preserve his life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or four days would come fetch him to execution and that it was to serve his Enemies to keep hi◠blood to gratifie their malice We read in the Bible that Nicanor
evade it This other lesson is too high and too difficult 'T is for men of the first Form of knowledge purely to insist upon the thing to consider and judge of it It appertains to one sole Socrates only to entertain Death with an indifferent Countenance to grow acquainted with it and to sport with it he seeks no consolation out of the thing it self dying appears to him a natural and indifferent accident 't is there that he fixes his sight and resolution without looking elsewhere The Disciples of Hegesias that pine themselves to death animated thereunto by his fine Lectures which were so frequent that King Ptolomy order'd he should be forbidden to entertain his followers with such homicide Doctrines those People do not consider death it self neither do they judge of it it is not there that they fix their Thoughts they run towards and aim at a new Being The poor wretches that we see brought upon the Scaffold full of ardent devotion and therein as much as in them lies employing all their Senses their Ears in hearing the instructions are given them their Eyes and Hands lifted up towards Heaven their Voices in loud Prayers with a vehement and continual emotion are doubtless things very commendable and proper for such a necessity We ought to commend them for their Devotion but not properly for their constancy They shun the encounter they divert their thoughts from the consideration of death as Children are amus'd with some Toy or other when the Chirurgion is going to give them a prick with his Lancet I have seen some who casting sometimes their eyes upon the dreadful Instruments of death round about have fainted and furiously turn'd their thoughts another way Such as are to pass a formidable Precipice are advis'd either to shut their eyes or to look another way Subrius Flavius being by Nero's command to be put to death and by the hand of Niger both of them great Captains when they led him to the place appointed for his Execution seeing the hole that Niger had caus'd to be hollow'd to put him into ill-favour'dly contriv'd Neither is this said he turning to the Souldiers who guarded him according to Military Discipline And to Niger who exhorted him to keep his head firm do but thou strike as firmly said he And he very well fore-saw what would follow when he said so for Niger's arm so trembled that he had several blows at his head before he could cut it off This man seems to have had his thoughts rightly fix'd upon the subject he that dyes in a Battel with his Sword in his hand does not then think of death he feels nor considers it not the ardour of the Fight diverts his thoughts another way An honest Man of my acquaintance falling as he was fighting a Duel at single Rapier and feeling himself nail'd to the earth by nine or ten thrusts of his Enemy every one present call'd to him to think of his Conscience but he has since told me that though he very well heard what they said it nothing mov'd him and that he never thought of any thing but how to disengage and revenge himself He afterwards kill'd his Man in that very Duel He who brought L. Syllanus the sentence of Death did him a very great kindness in that having receiv'd his answer that he was well prepar'd to dye but not by base hands he run upon him with his Souldiers to force him and as he naked as he was obstinately defended himself with his fists and feet he made him lose his Life in the dispute by that means dissipating and diverting in a sudden and furious Rage the painful apprehension of the lingring Death to which he was design'd We always think of something else either the hope of a better Life comforts and supports us or the hope of our Childrens Valour or the future glory of our Name or the leaving behind the evils of this Life or the Vengeance that threatens those who are the causers of our death administers Consolation to us Spero equidem mediis si quid pia numina possunt Supplicia hausurum scopulis nomine Dido Saepe vocaturum Audiam haec manes veniet mihi fama subimos Sure if the Gods have any power at all Split on a Rock thou shalt on Dido call thy Fortunes I shall know By Fame convey'd me to the shades below Xenophon was sacrificing with a Crown upon his Head when one came to bring him News of the Death of his Son Gryllus slain in the Battel of Mantinea At the first surprize of the News he threw his Crown to the Ground but understanding by the sequel of the Narrative the manner of a most brave and valiant Death he took it up and replac'd it upon his Head Epicurus himself at his Death consolates himself upon the Utility and Eternity of his Writings Omnes clari nobilitati Labores fiunt tolerabiles All Labours that are illustrious and renown'd are supportable And the same Wound the same Fatigue is not says Xenophon so intolerable to a General of an Army as to a common Souldier Epaminondas dyed much more cheerful having been inform'd that the Victory remain'd to him Haec sunt solatia haec fomenta summorum Dolorum These are lenitives and fomentations to the greatest Pains And such other Circumstances amuse divert and turn our thoughts from the consideration of the thing in it self Even the Arguments of Philosophy are always diverting and putting by the Matter so as scarce to rub upon the Sore The greatest man of the first Philosophical School and Superintendent over all the rest the great Zeno against Death forms this Syllogism No Evil is honourable but Death is honourable Therefore Death is no Evil. Against Drunkenness this No one commits his Secrets to a Drunkard but every one commits his Secrets to a Wise Man therefore a wise man is no Drunkard Is this to hit the white I love to see that these great and leading Souls cannot rid themselves of our Company As perfect men as they would be they are yet but simple men Revenge is a sweet Passion of great and natural impression I discern it well enough though I have no manner of Experience of it From which not long ago to divert a young Prince I did not tell him that he must to him who had struck him upon the one Cheek turn the other upon the account of Charity nor go about to represent to him the tragical Events that Poetry attributes to this Passion I did not touch upon that string but made it my Business to make him relish the Beauty of a contrary Image and by representing to him what Honour Esteem and good Will he would acquire by Clemency and good Nature diverted him to Ambition Thus a man is to deal in such Cases If your Passion of Love be too violent disperse it say they and they say true for I have oft try'd it with Advantage break
maintain'd that a Souldier could not justly be put to Death for his want of Courage And in truth a Man should make a great Difference betwixt Faults that merely proceed from Infirmity and those that are visibly the Effects of Treachery and Malice for in the last they will fully act against the Rules of Reason that Nature has imprinted in us whereas in the former it seems as if we might produce the same Nature who left us in such a state of Imperfection and defect of Courage for our justification Insomuch that many have thought we are not justly questionable for any thing but what we commit against the Light of our own Conscience And it is partly upon this Rule that those ground their Opinion who disapprove of Capital and Sanguinary Punishments inflicted upon Hereticks and Miscreants and theirs also who hold that an Advocate or a Judge are not accountable for having ignorantly fail'd in their Administration But as to Cowardize it is most certain that the most usual way of chastising that is by Ignominy and Disgrace and it is suppos'd that this Practice was first brought into use by the Legislator Cherondas and that before his time the Laws of Greece punish'd those with Death who fled from a Battel whereas he ordain'd only that they should be three days expos'd in the publick Place dress'd in Womens Attire hoping yet for some Service from them having awak'd their Courage by this open Shame Suffundere malis hominis sanguinem quà m effundere choosing rather to bring the Blood into their Cheeks than to let it out of their Bodies It appears also that the Roman Laws did anciently punish those with Death who had run away for Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Emperour Julian commanded ten of his Souldiers who had turn'd their Backs in an Encounter against the Parthians to be first degraded and afterwards put to death according says he to the ancient Laws and yet else-where for the like Offence he only condemns others to remain amongst the Prisoners under the Baggage Ensign The punishment the People of Rome inflicted upon those who fled from the Battle of Cannae and those who run away with Cneius Fulvius at his Defeat did not extend to death And yet methinks Men should consider what they do in such Cases lest disgrace should make such Delinquents desperate and not only faint Friends but implacable and mortal Enemies Of late memory the Seigneur de Franget Lieutenant to the Mareschal de Chattilion's Company having by the Mareschal de Chabanes been put in Governour of Fontarabie in the Place of Monsieur de Lude and having surrender'd it to the Spaniard he was for that condemn'd to be degraded from all Nobility and both himself and his Posterity declar'd ignoble taxable and for ever incapable of bearing Arms which severe Sentence was afterwards accordingly executed at Lions and since that all the Gentlemen who were in Guise when Count Nassau enter'd into it underwent the same Punishment as several others have done since for the like Offence Notwithstanding in case of such a manifest Ignorance or Cowardize as exceeds all other ordinary Example 't is but reason to take it for a sufficient Proof of Treachery and Malice and for such it ought to be censur'd and punish'd CHAP. XVI A Proceeding of some Ambassadours I Observe in all my Travels this Custom ever to learn something from the Information of those with whom I confer which is the best School of all other and to put my Company upon those Subjects they are the best able to speak of Basti al nocchiero ragionar de venti Al bifolco de j Torj le sue Piaghe Contj'l guerrier conti'l Pastor glj armenti The Sea-men best can reason of the Winds Of Oxen none so well as lab'ring Hinds The huffing Souldier best of Wounds and Knocks And gentler Shepheards of their harmless Flocks For it often falls out that on the contrary every one will rather choose to be prating of another Man's Province than his own thinking it so much new Reputation acquir'd witness the Jeer Archidamus put upon Pariander That he had quitted the Glory of being an excellent Physician to gain the Repute of a very bad Poet. And do but observe how large and ample Caesar is to make us understand his Invention of building Bridges and contriving Engines of War and how succinct and reserv'd in Comparison where he speaks of the Offices of his Profession his own Valour and military Conduct His Exploits sufficiently prove him a great Captain and that he knew well enough but he would be thought a good Engineer to boot a quality something rare and not much to be expected in him The elder Dionysius was a very great Captain as it befitted his Fortune he should be but he took very great Pains to get a particular Reputation by Poetry and yet he was never cut out for a Poet. A Gentleman of the long Robe being not long since brought to see a Study furnish'd with all sorts of Books both of his own and all other Faculties took no occasion at all to entertain himself with any of them but fell very rudely and impertinently to descant upon a Barricado plac'd before the Study-door a thing that a hundred Captains and common Souldiers see every day without taking any notice or offence Optat ephippia bos piger optat arare caballus The lazy Oxe would Saddle have and Bit The Steed a Yoke neither for either fit By this course a Man shall never improve himself nor arrive at any Perfection in any thing He must therefore make it his Business always to put the Architect the Painter the Statuary as also every Mechanick Artizan upon discourse of their own Capacities And to this purpose in reading Histories which is every Body's Subject I use to consider what kind of Men are the Authors which if Persons that profess nothing but mere Learning I in and from them principally observe and learn the Stile and Language if Physicians I upon that account the rather incline to credit what they report of the Temperature of the Air of the Health and Complexions of Princes of Wounds and Diseases if Lawyers we are from them to take notice of the Controversies of Right and Title the Establishment of Laws and Civil Government and the like if Divines the Affairs of the Church Ecclesiastical Censures Marriages and Dispensations if Courtiers Manners and Ceremonies if Souldiers the things that properly belong to their Trade and principally the Accounts of such Actions and Enterprizes wherein they were personally engaged and if Ambassadours we are to observe their Negotiations Intelligences and Practices and the Manner how they are to be carried on And this is the reason why which perhaps I should have lightly pass'd over in another I dwelt upon and maturely consider'd one Passage in the History writ by Monsieur de Langey a Man of very great Judgment in things of that nature which was after having given a
come to Vertue that like Consequences and Difficulties overwhelm and render it austere and inaccessible whereas much more aptly than in Voluptuousness they enable sharpen and heighten the perfect and divine Pleasure they procure us He renders himself unworthy of it who will counterpoise his Expence with the Fruit and does neither understand the Blessing nor how to use it Those who Preach to us that the quest of it is craggy difficult and painful but the Fruition pleasant and grateful what do they mean by that but to tell us that it is always unpleasing The most perfect have been forc'd to content themselves to aspire unto it and to approach it only without ever possessing it But they are deceiv'd and do not take notice that of all the Pleasures we know the very Pursuit is pleasant The Attempt ever relishes of the quality of the thing to which it is directed for it is a good part of and consubstantial with the Effect The Felicity and Beatitude that glitters in Vertue shines throughout all her Apartments and Avenues even to the first Entry and utmost Pale and Limits Now of all the Benefits that Vertue confers upon us the Contempt of Death is one of the greatest as the means that accommodates Humane Life with a soft and easie Tranquillity and gives us a pure and pleasant Taste of Living without which all other pleasure would be extinct which is the Reason why all the Rules by which we are to live center and concur in this one Article And altho they all in like manner with one consent endeavour to teach us also to despise Grief Poverty and the other Accidents to which humane Life by its own Nature and Constitution is subjected it is not nevertheless with the same Importunity as well by reason the fore-named Accidents are not of so great necessity the greater part of Mankind passing over their whole Lives without ever knowing what Poverty is and some without Sorrow or Sickness as Xenophilus the Musician who liv'd a hundred and six Years in a perfect and continual Health as also because at the worst Death can whenever we please cut short and put an end to all these Inconveniences But as to Death it is inevitable Omnes eodem cogimur omnium Versatur Vrna serius ocius Sors exitura nos in aeternum exilium impositura Cymbae We all are to one Voyage bound by turn Sooner or later all must to the Urn When Charon calls aboard we must not stay But to eternal Exile sail away And consequently if it frights us 't is a perpetual Torment and for which there is no Consolation nor Redress There is no way by which we can possibly avoid it it commands all Points of the Compass we may continually turn our Heads this way and that and pry about as in a suspected Country quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendet but it like Tantalus his Stone hangs over us Our Courts of Justice often send back condemn'd Criminals to be executed upon the Place where the Fact was committed but carry them to all fine Houses by the way and prepare for them the best Entertainment you can non Sicula Dapes Dulcem elaborabunt saporem Non Avium Citharaeque cantus Somnum reducent the tasts of such as these Choicest Sicilian Dainties cannot please Nor yet of Birds or Harps the Harmonies Once charm asleep or close their watchful Eyes do you think they could relish it and that the fatal end of their Journey being continually before their Eyes would not alter and deprave their Pallat from tasting these Regalio's Audit iter numeratque dies spatioque viarum Metitur vitam torquetur peste futura He time and space computes by length of ways Sums up the number of his few sad dayes And his sad thoughts full of his fatal doom Can dream of nothing but the blow to come The end of our Race is Death 't is the necessary Object of our aim which if it fright us how is it possible to advance a step without a Fit of an Ague the Remedy the Vulgar use is not to think on 't but from what bruitish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness They must bridle the Ass by the Tayl. Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro He who the order of his steps has laid To light and natural motion retrograde 't is no wonder if he be often trap'd in the Pitfall They use to fright People with the very mention of Death and many cross themselves as it were the name of the Devil and because the making a mans Will is in reference to dying not a man will be perswaded to take a Pen in hand to that purpose till the Physician has pass'd sentence upon him and totally given him over and then betwixt Grief and Terror God knows in how fit a condition of Understanding he is to do it The Romans by reason that this poor syllable Death was observ'd to be so harsh to the Ears of the People and the sound so ominous had found out a way to soften and spin it out by a Periphrasis and instead of pronouncing bluntly such a one is dead to say such a one has liv'd or such a one has ceas'd to live for provided there was any mention of Life in the case though past it carried yet some sound of Consolation And from them it is that we have borrow'd our expression of the late Monsieur such and such a one Peradventure as the Saying is the term we have liv'd is worth our money I was born betwixt eleven and twelve a clock in the Forenoon the last of February 1533. according to our Computation beginning the Year the first of January and it is now but just fifteen dayes since I was compleat nine and thirty years old I make account to live at least as many more In the mean time to trouble a mans self with the thought of a thing so far off is a sensless Foolery But what Young and Old dye after the very same manner and no one departs out of Life otherwise than if he had but just before enter'd into it neither is any so old and decrepid who has heard of Methusalem that does not think he has yet twenty years of Constitution good at least Fool that thou art who has assur'd unto thee the term of Life Thou depend'st upon Physicians Tales and Stories but rather consult Experience and the fragility of Humane Nature for according to the common course of things 't is long since that thou liv'dst by extraordinary Favour Thou hast already out-liv'd the ordinary term of Life and that it is so reckon up thy Acquaintance how many more have died before they arriv'd at thy Age than have attain'd unto it and of those who have ennobled their Lives by their Renown take but an Account and I dare lay a Wager thou wilt find more who have dyed before than after five and thirty
all things included And therefore to lament and take on that we shall not be alive a hundred Years hence is the same Folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred Years ago Death is the beginning of another Life So did we weep and so much it cost us to enter into this and so did we put off our former Veil in entring into it Nothing can be grievous that is but once and is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so soon be dispatch'd Long Life and short are by Death made all one for there is no long nor short to things that are no more Aristotle tells us that there are certain little Beasts upon the Banks of the River Hypanis that never live above a day they which dye at eight of the Clock in the Morning dye in their Youth and those that dye at five in the Evening in their extreamest Age which of us would not laugh to see this Moment of Continuance put into the consideration of Weal or Woe The most and the least of ours in comparison of Eternity or yet to the Duration of Mountains Rivers Stars Trees and even of some Animals is no less ridiculous But Nature compells us to it Go out of this World says she as you enter'd into it the same Pass you made from Death to Life without Passion or Fear the same after the same manner repeat from Life to Death Your Death is a part of the Order of the Universe 't is a part of the Life of the World inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi curores vitai lampada tradunt Mortals amongst themselves by turns do live And Life's bright Torch to the next Runner give 'T is the Condition of your Creation Death is a part of you and whilst you endeavour to evade it you avoid your selves This very Being of yours that you now enjoy is equally divided betwixt Life and Death The day of your Birth is one days advance towards the Grave Prima quae vitam dedit hora carpsit The Hour that gave of Life the benefit Did also a whole Hour shorten it Nascentes morimur finisque ab origine pendet As we are born we dye and our Life's end Upon our Life's beginning does depend All the whole time you live you purloin from Life and live at the expence of Life it self the perpetual work of our whole Life is but to lay the foundation of Death you are in Death whilst you live because you still are after Death when you are no more alive Or if you had rather have it so you are dead after Life but dying all the while you live and Death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead If you have made your profit of Life you have had enough of it go your way satisfied Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis Why should'st thou not go like a full gorg'd Guest Sated with Life as he is with a Feast If you have not known how to make the best use of it and if it was unprofitable to you what need you care to lose it to what end would you desire longer to keep it cur amplius addere quaeris Rursum quod pereat malè ingratum occidat omne And why renew thy time to what intent Live o're again a Life that was ill spent Life in it self is neither good nor evil it is the Scene of good or evil as you make it and if you have liv'd a day you have seen all one day is equal and like to all other dayes there is no other Light no other other Shade this very Sun this Moon these very Stars this very Order and Revolution of things is the same your Ancestors enjoy'd and that shall also entertain your Posterity Non alium videre patres aliumve nepotes Aspicient Your Grandsires saw no other things of old Nor shall your Nephews other things behold And come the worst that can come the distribution and variety of all the Acts of my Comedy is perform'd in a Year If you have observ'd the Revolution of the four Seasons they comprehend the Infancy Youth Virility and old Age of the World The Year has play'd his part and knows no other way has no new Farce but must begin and repeat the same again it will always be the same thing Versamur ibidem atque insumus usque Where still we plot and still contrive in vain For in the same state still we do remain Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus By its own footstepts led the Year doth bring Both ends together in an annual Ring Time is not resolv'd to create you any new Recreations Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque Quod placeat nihil est eadem sunt omnia semper More Pleasures than are made Time will not frame For to all times all things shall be the same Give place to others as others have given place to you Equality is the Soul of Equity Who can complain of being comprehended in the same Destiny wherein all things are involv'd Besides live as long as you can you shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to lye dead in the Grave 't is all to no purpose you shall be every whit as long in the condition you so much fear as if you had died at Nurse licet quotvis vivendo vincere secla Mors aeterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit And live as many Ages as you will Death ne'rtheless shall be eternal still And yet I will place you in such a condition as you shall have no reason to be displeased In vera nescis nullum fore marte alium te Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum Stansque jacentem When dead a living self thou can'st not have Or to lament or trample on thy grave Nor shall you so much as wish for the Life you are so concern'd about Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum Life nor our selves we wish in that Estate Nor Thoughts of what we were unrest create Death were less to be fear'd than nothing if there could be any thing less than nothing multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus If less than nothing any thing can shew Death then would both appear and would be so Neither can it any way concern you whether you are living or dead living by reason that you are still in being dead because you are no more Moreover no one dies before his Hour and the Time you leave behind was no more yours than that was laps'd and gone before you came into the World nor does it any more concern you Respice enim quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas Temporis aeterni fuerit Look back
and tho Times past eternal were In those before us yet we had no share Wherever your Life ends it is all there neither does the Utility of living consist in the length of days but in the well husbanding and improving of Time and such an one may have been who has longer continued in the World than the ordinary Age of Man that has yet liv'd but a little while Make use of Time while it is present with you It depends upon your Will and not upon the number of Days to have a sufficient length of Life Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the Place towards which you are continually going and yet there is no Journey but hath its end But if Company will make it more pleasant or more easie to you does not all the World go the self same way omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur When thou art dead let this thy Comfort be That all the World by turn must follow thee Does not all the World dance the same Brawl that you do Is there any thing that does not grow old as well as you A thousand Men a thousand Animals and a thousand other Creatures dye at the same Moment that you expire Nam nox nulla diem neque noctem aurora secuta est Quae non audierit mistos vagitibus aegris Ploratus mortis comites funeris atri No Night succeeds the Day nor Mornings Light Rises to chase the sullen Shades of Night Wherein there is not heard the dismal Groans Of dying Men mix'd with the woful moans Of living Friends as also with the Cries And Dirges fitting fun'ral Obsequies To what end should you endeavour to avoid unless there were a possibility to evade it you have seen Examples enow of those who have received so great a benefit by Dying as thereby to be manifestly deliver'd from infallible Miseries but have you Talkt with any of those who have feared a Disadvantage by it It must therefore needs be very foolish to condemn a thing you neither experimented in your own Person nor by that of any other Why says Nature dost thou complain of me and Destiny Do we do thee any wrong Is it for thee to govern us or for us to dispose of thee Though peradventure thy Age may not be accomplish'd yet thy Life is A Man of low Stature is as much a man as a Gyant neither Men nor their Lives are measur'd by the Ell. Chiron refus'd to be immortal when he was acquainted with the Conditions under which he was to enjoy it by the God of time it self and its Duration his Father Saturn Do but seriously consider how much more insupportable an immortal and painful Life would be to man than what I have already design'd him If you had not Death to ease you of your Pains and Cares you would eternally curse me for having depriv'd you of the Benefit of Dying I have 't is true mix'd a little Bitterness with it to the end that seeing of what Conveniency and Use it is you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it and that you might be so establish'd in this Moderation as neither to nauseate Life nor have an Antipathy for dying which I have decreed you shall once do I have temper'd the one and the other betwixt Pleasure and Pain and was I that first taught Thales the most eminent of all your Sages that to Live and to Dye were indifferent which made him very wisely answer who ask'd him Why then he did not dye because says he it is indifferent The Elements of Water Earth Fire and Air and the other Parts of this Creation of thine are no more the Instruments of thy Life than they are of thy Death Why dost thou fear thy last day it contributes no more to thy dissolution than every one of the rest The last Step is not the cause of Cassitude it does but confess it Every Day travels towards Death the last only arrives at it These are the good Lessons our Mother Nature teaches I have often consider'd with my self whence it should proceed that in War the Image of Death whether we look upon it as to our own particular danger or that of another should without Comparison appear less dreadful than at home in our own Houses for if it were not so it would be an Army of whining Milk-sops and that being still in all Places the same there should be notwithstanding much more Assurance in Peasants and the meaner sort of People than others of better Quality and Education and do verily believe that it is those terrible Ceremonies and Preparations wherewith we set it out that more terrifie us than the thing it self a new quite contrary way of living the Cries of Mothers Wives and Children the Visits of astonish'd and afflicted Friends the Attendance of pale and blubber'd Servants a dark Room set round with burning Tapers our Beds environed with Physicians and Divines in sum nothing but Ghostliness and Horror round about us render it so formidable that a Man almost fancies himself dead and buried already Children are afraid even of those they love best and are best acquainted with when disguised in a Vizor and so are we The Vizor must be removed as well from Things as Persons which being taken away we shall find nothing underneath but the very same Death that a mean Servant or a poor Chamber-maid died a day or two ago without any manner of Apprehension or Concern Happy therefore is the Death that deprives us of the leisure to prepare things requisite for this unnecessary Pomp a Pomp that only renders that more terrible which ought not to be fear'd and that no Man upon Earth can possibly avoid CHAP. XX. Of the Force of Imagination FOrtis imaginatio generat casum A strong Imagination begets Accident say the School-men I am one of those who are most sensible of the Power of Imagination Every one is justled but some are overthrown by it It has a very great Impression upon me and I make it my Business to avoid wanting force to resist it I could live by the sole help of healthful and jolly Company The very sight of anothers Pain does materially work upon me and I naturally usurp the Sence of a third Person to share with him in his Torment A perpetual Cough in another tickles my Lungs and Throat I more unwillingly visit the sick I love and am by Duty interested to look after than those I care not for and from whom I have no expectation I take possession of the Disease I am concern'd at and lay it too much to heart and do not at all wonder that Fancy should distribute Fevers and sometimes kill such as allow too much Scope and are too willing to entertain it Simon Thomas was a great Physician of his time I remember that hapning one day at Tholouze to meet him at a rich old Fellows House who was troubled with naughty Lungs and
Houses and that are furnish'd with the richest Furniture without Doors Windows Trunks or Chests to lock a Thief being there punish'd double to what they are in other Places Where they crack Lice with their Teeth like Monkeys and abhor to see them kill'd with ones Nails Where in all their Lives they neither cut their Hair nor pare their Nails and in another Place pare those of the Right-hand only letting the left grow for Ornament and Bravery Where they suffer the Hair on the right side to grow as long as it will and shave the other and in the neighb'ring Provinces some let their Hair grow long before and some behind shaving close the rest Where Parents let out their Children and Husbands their Wives to their Guests to hire Where a Man may get his own Mother with Child and Fathers make use of their own Daughters or their Sons without Scandal or Offence Where at their solemn Feasts they interchangeably lend their Children to one another without any consideration of Nearness of Blood In one Place Men feed upon Humane Flesh in another 't is reputed a charitable Office for a Man to kill his Father at a certain Age and elsewhere the Fathers dispose of their Children whilst yet in their Mothers Wombs some to be preserv'd and carefully brought up and others they proscribe either to be thrown off or made away Elsewhere the old Husbands lend their Wives to Young-men and in another place they are in common without offence in one place particularly the Women take it for a mark of Honour to have as many gay fring'd Tassels at the bottom of their Garment as they have lain with several men Moreover has not Custome made a Republick of Women separately by themselves Has it not put Arms into their Hands made them to raise Armies and fight Battels and does she not by her own Precept instruct the most ignorant Vulgar and make them perfect in things which all the Philosophy in the World could never beat into the Heads of the wisest men For we know entire Nations where Death was not only despis'd but entertain'd with the greatest Triumph where Children of seven years old offer'd themselves to be whip'd to death without changing their Countenance where Riches was in such Contempt that the poorest and most wretched Citizen would not have deign'd to stoop to take up a Purse of Crowns And we know Regions very fruitful in all manner of Provisions where notwithstanding the most ordinary Diet and that they are most pleas'd with is only Bread Cresses and Water Did not Custom moreover work that Miracle in Chios that of seven hundred Years it was never known that ever Maid or Wife committed any act to the prejudice of her Honour To conclude there is nothing in my opinion that she does not or may not do and therefore with very good reason it is that Pindar calls her the Queen and Empress of the World He that was seen to beat his Father and reprov'd for so doing made answer that it was the Custom of their Family that in like manner his Father had beaten his Grand-father his Grand-father his great Grand-father and this sayes he pointing to his Son when he comes to my Age shall beat me And the Father whom the Son dragg'd and hal'd along the streets commanded him to stop at a certain Door for he himself he said had dragg'd his Father no farther that being the utmost limit of the hereditary Insolence the Sons us'd to practice upon the Fathers in their Family It is as much by Custom as Infirmity sayes Aristotle that Women tear their Hair bite their Nails and eat Coals Chalk and such Trash and more by Custom than Nature that men abuse themselves with one another The Laws of Conscience which we pretend to be deriv'd from Nature proceed from Custome every one having an inward Veneration for the Opinions and Manners approv'd and receiv'd amongst his own People cannot without very great Reluctancy depart from them nor apply himself to them without applause In times past when those of Creet would curse any one they pray'd the Gods to engage them in some ill Custom But the principal effect of the power of Custom is so to seize and ensnare us that it is hardly in our power to disengage our selves from its gripe or so to come to our selves as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoyns To say the truth by reason that we suck it in with our Milk and that the face of the World presents it self in this posture to our first sight it seems as if we were born upon condition to pursue this Practice and the common Fancies that we find in repute every where about us and infus'd into our Minds with the Seed of our Fathers appear to be most universal and genuine From whence it comes to pass that whatever is off the hinge of Custom is believ'd to be also off the hinges of Reason and how unreasonably for the most part God knows If as we who study our selves have learn'd to do every one who hears a good Sentence would immediately consider how it does any way touch his own private Concern every one would find that it was not so much a good Saying as a severe Lash to the ordinary Bestiality of his own Judgment but men receive the Precepts and Admonitions of Truth as generally directed to the Common Sort and never particularly to themselves and instead of applying them to their own manners do only very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to memory without suffering themselves to be at all instructed or converted by them But let us return to the Empire of Custom Such People as have been bred up to Liberty and subject to no other Dominion but the authothority of their own Will every one being a Sovereign to himself or at least govern'd by no wiser Heads than their own do look upon all other Form of Government as monstrous and contrary to Nature Those who are inur'd to Monarchy do the same and what opportunity soever Fortune presents them with to change even then when with the greatest difficulties they have disengag'd themselves from one Master that was troublesome and grievous to them they presently run with the same difficulties to create another being not able how roughly dealt with soever to hate the Government they were born under and the obedience they have so long been accustom'd to 'T is by the mediation and perswasion of Custom that every one is content with the place where he is planted by Nature and the High-landers of Scotland no more pant after the better Air of Tourain than the starv'd Scythian after the delightful Fields of Thessaly Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to assume the Custom of the Indians of eating the dead Corps of their Fathers for that was their Use believing they could not give them a better nor more noble Sepulture than to bury them in their own
in Company with him the said Lord Almoner and another Bishop he was presently aware of this Gentleman who had been denoted to him and presently caus'd him to be call'd to his Presence to whom being come before him seeing him pale and trembling with the Conscience of his Guilt he thus said Monsieur such a one You already guess what I have to say to you your Countenance discovers it and therefore 't is in vain to disguise your Practice for I am so well inform'd of your Business that it will but make worse for you to go about to conceal or to deny it you know very well such and such Passages which were the most secret Circumstances of his Conspiracy and therefore be sure as you tender your own Life to confess to me the whole Truth of your Design The poor Man seeing himself thus trap'd and convinc'd for the whole Business had been discover'd to the Queen by one of the Complices was in such a Taking he knew not what to do but joyning his Hands to beg and sue for Mercy he meant to throw himself at this Prince's Feet who taking him up proceeded to say Come on Sir and tell me have I at any time heretofore done you any Injury or have I through my particular Hatred or private Malice offended any Kinsman or Friend of yours It is not above three Weeks that I have known you What Inducement then could move you to attempt my Death To which the Gentleman with a trembling Voice reply'd That it was no particular Grudge he had to his Person but the general Interest and Concern of his Party and that he had been put upon it by some who had perswaded him it would be a meritorious Act by any means to extirpate so great and so powerful an Enemy of their Religion Well said the Prince I will now let you see how much more charitable the Religion is that I maintain than that which you profess Yours has perswaded you to kill me without hearing me speak and without ever having given you any cause of Offence and mine commands me to forgive you convict as you are by your own Confession of a Design to murther me without Reason Get you gone that I see you no more and if you are wise choose henceforward honester Men for your Counsellors in your Designs The Emperour Augustus being in Gaule had certain information of a Conspiracy L. Cinna was contriving against him who thereupon resolv'd to make him an Example and to that end sent to summon his Friends to meet the next morning in Counsel but the night between he past over with great unquietness of Mind considering that he was to put to death a young man of an illustrious Family and Nephew to the great Pompey which made him break out into several ejaculations of Passion What then said he Shall it be said that I shall live in perpetual Anxiety and continual Alarm and suffer my Assassinates in the mean time to walk abroad at Liberty Shall he go unpunished after having conspir'd against my Life a Life that I have hitherto defended in so many Civil Wars and so many Battels both by Land and Sea And after having setled the Universal Peace of the whole World shall this man be pardoned who has conspired not only to Murther but to Sacrifice me For the Conspiracy was to kill him at Sacrifice After which remaining for some time silent he re-begun louder and straining his Voice more than before to exclaim against himself and say Why liv'st thou If it be for the good of many that thou should'st Dye must there be no end of thy Revenges and Cruelties Is thy Life of so great value that so many Mischiefs must be done to preserve it His Wife Livia seeing him in this perplexity Will you take a Woman's Counsel said she Do as the Physicians do who when the ordinary Recipe's will do no good make Tryal of the contrary By severity you have hitherto prevail'd nothing Lepidus has follow'd Savidienus Murena Lepidus Caepio Murena and Egnatius Caepio Begin now and try how Sweetness and Clemency will succeed Cinna is convict forgive him he will never henceforth have the Heart to hurt thee and it will be an Act of Glory Augustus was glad that he had met with an Advocate of his own Humour wherefore having thank'd his Wife and in the Morning countermanded his Friends he had before summon'd to Council he commanded Cinna all alone to be brought to him who being accordingly come and a Chair by his Appointment set him having commanded every one out of the Room he spake to him after this manner In the first place Cinna I demand of thee patient Audience do not interrupt me in what I am about to say and I will afterwards give thee Time and Leisure to answer Thou know'st Cinna that having taken thee Prisoner in the Enemies Camp and that an Enemy not only made but born so I gave thee thy Life restor'd thee all thy Goods and finally put thee in so good a posture by my Bounty of living well and at thy ease that the Victorious envy'd the Conquer'd The Sacerdotal Office which thou mad'st Suit to me for I conferr'd upon thee after having deny'd it to others whose Fathers have ever borne Arms in my Service and after so many Obligations thou hast undertaken to kill me At which Cinna crying out that he was very far from entertaining any so wicked a Thought Thou dost not keep thy Promise Cinna continued Augustus that thou would'st not interrupt me Yes thou hast undertaken to murther me in such a Place such a Day in such and such Company and in such a Manner At which Words seeing Cinna astonish'd and silent not upon the Account of his Promise so to be but interdict with the Conscience of his Crime Why proceeded Augustus to what end would'st thou do it Is it to be Emperour Believe me the Republick is in a very ill Condition if I am the only Man betwixt thee and the Empire Thou art not able so much as to defend thy own House and but t'other day wast baffled in a Suit by the oppos'd Interest of a mean manumitted Slave What hast thou neither Means nor Power in any other thing but only to attempt against Caesar I quit claim to the Empire if there is no other but I to obstruct thy Hopes Can'st thou believe that Paulus that Fabius that the Cassians and Servilians and so many Noble Romans not only so in Title but who by their Virtue honour their Nobility would suffer or endure thee After this and a great deal more that he said to him for he was two long Hours in speaking Well Cinna go thy way said he I again give thee that Life in the Quality of a Traytor and a Parricide which I once before gave thee in the Quality of an Enemy Let Friendship from this time forward begin betwixt us and let us try to make it appear whether I have given or
Hec studia atque omnes delitias animi Alloquar audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem Nunquam ego te vita frater amabilior Aspiciam posthac at certe semper emabo Ah! Brother what a Life did I commence From that sad Day that thou wert ravisht hence Those Joys are gone that whilst thou tarried'st here By thy sweet Conversation nourish't were With thee when dying my good Fortune fled And in thy Grave my Soul was buried The Muses at thy Funerals I forsook And of thy Joy my leave for ever took Dearer than Life am I so wretched then Never to see nor speak to thee agen Nor hear thy Voice now frozen up by Death Yet will I Love thee to my latest Breath But let us hear a little a Boy of Sixteen speak In this place I did once intend to have incerted those Mesmoirs upon that famous Edict of January But being I since find that they are already Printed and with a malicious design by some who make it their business to molest and endeavour to subvert the state of our Government not caring whether they mend and reform it or no and that they have confounded this Writing of his with others of their own Leaven I desisted from that purpose But that the Memory of the Father may not be interested nor suffer with such as could not come near hand to be acquainted with his Principles I here give them truly to understand that it was writ by him in his very green Years and that by way of Exercise only as a common Theme that has been tumbled and tost by a Thousand Writers I make no question but that he himself believ'd what he writ being so Consciencious that way that he would not so much as lie in jest and do moreover know that could it have been in his own Choice he had rather have been Born at Venice than at Soarlac and he had reason But he had another Maxime Soveraignly imprinted in his Soul very Religiously to Obey and submit to the Laws under which he was Born There never was a better Citizen more affectionate to his Country nor a greater Enemy to all the Commotions and Innovations of his time So that he would doubtless much rather have employ'd his Talent to the extinguishing of those Civil Flames than have added any Fewel to them For he had a Mind fashion'd to the Model of better Ages But in exchange of this Serious Piece I will present you with another of a more Gay and Frolick Air from the same Hand and Writ at the same Age. CHAP. XXVIII Nine and Twenty Sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie to Madam de Grammont Countess of Guisson MAdam I offer to your Ladyship nothing of mine either because it is already yours or because I find nothing in my Writings worthy of you But I have a great desire that these Verses into what part of the World soever they may travel may carry your Name in the Front for the Honour will accrue to them by having the great Corisanda de Andonis for their safe Conduct I conceive this present Madam so much the more proper for you both by reason there are few Ladies in France who are so good Judges of Poetry and make so good use of it as you do as also that there is none who can give it that Spirit and Life your Ladyship does by that incomparable Voice Nature has added to your other perfections you will find Madam that these Verses deserve your esteem and will I dare say concur with me in this that Gascony never yeilded more Invention finer Expression or that more evidence themselves to flow from a Masters hand And be not Jealous that you have but the remainder of what I Publisht some Years since under the Name of Monsieur de Foix your brave Kinsman for certainly these have something in them more spritely and luxuriant as being Writ in a greener Youth and enflam'd with the Noble Ardour that I will tell your Ladyship in your Ear. The other were Writ since when he was a Suitor in the honour of his Wife already relishing of I know not what Matrimonial Coldness And for my part I am of the same opinion with those who hold that Poesie appears no where so Gay as in a wanton and irregular Subject These Nine and Twenty Sonnets that were inserted here are since Printed with his other Works CHAP. XXIX Of Moderation AS if we had an infectious Touch we by our manner of handling corrupt things that in themselves are laudable and good We may grasp Vertue so hard till it become Vicious if we embrace it too streight and with too violent a desire Those who say there is never any excess in Vertue for as much as it is no Vertue when it once becomes excess only play upon words Insani sapiens nomen ferat aequus iniqui Vltra quam satis est virtutem si petat ipsam The Wise for Mad the Just for Unjust pass When more than needs ev'n Vertue they embrace This is a subtle consideration in Philosophy A Man may both be too much in Love with Vertue and be excessive in a just Action Holy Writ agrees with this Be not Wiser than you should but be soberly Wise. I have known a great Man prejudice the Opinion Men had of his Devotion by pretending to be devout beyond all Examples of others of his condition I Love temperate and moderate Natures An immoderate Zeal even to that which is good though it does not offend does astonish me and puts me to study what Name to give it Neither the Mother of Pausanias who was the first instructer of her Sons process and threw the first stone towards his Death Nor Posthumus the Dictator who put his Son to Death whom the Ardour of Youth had fortunately pusht upon the Enemy a little more advanc't than the rest of his Squadron do appear to me so just as strange and I should neither advise nor like to follow so Savage a Vertue and that costs so dear The Archer that shoots over misses as well as he that falls short and 't is equally troublesome to my sight to look up at a great Light and to look down into a dark Abyss Callicles in Plato says That the extremity of Philosophy is hurtful and advises not to dive into it beyond the limits of Profit that taken moderately it is pleasant and useful but that in the end it renders a Man Bruitish and Vicious A Contemner of Religion and the common Laws an Enemy to Civil Conversation and all Humane Pleasures incapable of all Publick Administration unfit either to assist others or to relieve himself and a fit Object for all sorts of Injuries and Affronts without remedy or satisfaction He says true for in its Excess it enslaves our Natural Freedom and by an impertinent subtilty leads us out of the fair and beaten way that Nature has plain'd out for us The Love we bear to our
one Natural and the other Febrifick as there are in ours When I consider the Impression that our River of Dordoigne has made in my time on the right Bank of its descent and that in Twenty Years it has gain'd so much and undermin'd the Foundations of so many Houses I perceive it to be an extraordinary Agitation for had it always follow'd this Course or were hereafter to do it the prospect of the World would be totally chang'd But Rivers alter their Course sometimes beating against the one side and sometimes the other and sometimes quietly keeping the Channel I do not speak of sudden Inundations the causes of which every Body understands In Medoc by the Sea-shore the Sieur d' Arsac my Brother sees an Estate he had there Buried under the Sands which the Sea Vomits before it where the tops of some Houses are yet to be seen and where his Rents and Revenues are converted into pitiful Barren Pasturage The Inhabitants of which place affirm That of late Years the Sea has driven so vehemently upon them that they have lost above Four Leagues of Land These Sands are her Harbingers And we now see great heaps of moving Sand that march half a League before her The other Testimony from Antiquity to which some would apply this discovery of the new World is in Aristotle at least if that little Book of unheard of Miracles be his He there tells us That certain Carthaginians having crost the Atlantick Sea without the Streight of Gibralter and Sailed a very long time discover'd at last a great and fruitful Island all cover'd over with Wood and Water'd with several broad and deep Rivers far remote from all firm Land and that they and others after them allur'd by the gratitude and fertility of the Soil went thither with their Wives and Children and began to Plant a Colony But the Senate of Carthage visibly perceiving their People by little and little to grow thin Issu'd out an express Prohibition That no one upon pain of Death should Transport themselves thither and also drove out these new Inhabitants fearing 't is said lest in process of time they should so multiply as to supplant them themselves and Ruine their State But this Relation of Aristotles does no more agree with our new found Lands than the other This Man that I have is a plain ignorant Fellow and therefore the more likely to tell Truth For your better bred sort of Men are much more Curious in their Observation 't is true and discover a great deal more but then they gloss upon it and to give the greater weight to what they deliver and allure your Belief they cannot forbear a little to alter the Story they never represent things to you simply as they are but rather as they appear'd to them or as they would have them appear to you and to gain the reputation of Men of Judgment and the better to induce your Faith are willing to help out the Business with something more than is really true of their own Invention Now in this Case we should either have a Man of Irreproachable Veracity or so Simple that he has not wherewithal to Contrive and to give a Colour of Truth to False Relations and that can have no Ends in Forging an Untruth Such a one is mine and besides the little suspicion the Man lies under he has divers times shew'd me several Sea-men and Merchants that at the same time went the same Voyage I shall therefore content my self with his Information without enquiring what the Cosmographers say to the Business We should have Maps to trace out to us the particular places where they have been but for having had this advantage over us to have seen the Holy Land they would have the priviledg forsooth to tell us Stories of all the other parts of the World besides I would have every one Write what he knows and as much as he knows but no more and that not in this only but in all other Subjects For such a Person may have some particular Knowledg and Experience of the nature of such a River or such a Fountain that as to other things knows no more than what every Body does and yet to keep a clutter with this little Pittance of his will undertake to Write the whole Body of Physicks A Vice from whence great Inconveniences derive their Original Now to return to my Subject I find that there is nothing Barbarous and Savage in this Nation by any thing that I can gather excepting That every one gives the Title of Barbarity to every thing that is not in use in his own Country As indeed we have no other level of Truth and Reason than the Example and Idea of the Opinions and Customs of the place wherein we Live There is always the true Religion there the perfect Government and the most exact and accomplish'd Usance of all things They are Savages at the same rate that we say Fruits are wild which Nature produces of her self and by her own ordinary progress whereas in truth we ought rather to call those wild whose Natures we have chang'd by our Artifice and diverted from the common Order In those the Genuine most useful and natural Vertues and Properties are Vigorous and Spritely which we have help'd to Degenerate in these by accomodating them to the pleasure of our own Corrupted Palate And yet for all this our Taste confesses a flavor and delicacy excellent even to Emulation of the best of ours in several Fruits those Countries abound with without Art or Culture neither is it reasonable that Art should gain the Preheminence of our great and powerful Mother Nature We have so express'd her with the additional Ornaments and Graces we have added to the Beauty and Riches of her own Works by our Inventions that we have almost Smother'd and Choak'd her and yet in other places where she shines in her own purity and proper lustre she strangely baffles and disgraces all our vain and frivolous Attempts Et veniunt hedetae sponte suae melius Surgit in solis formosior arbutus antris Et volucres nulla dulcius arte canunt The Ivie best spontaneously does thrive Th'Arbutus best in shady Caves does live And Birds in their wild Notes their Throats do streach With greater Art than Art it self can teach Our utmost endeavours cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the Nest of the least of Birds its Contexture Quaintness and Convenience Not so much as the Web of a Contemptible Spider All things says Plato are produc'd either by Nature by Fortune or by Art the greatest and most beautiful by the one or the other of the former the least and the most imperfect by the last These Nations then seem to me to be so far Barbarous as having receiv'd but very little form and fashion from Art and Humane Invention and consequently not much remote from their Original Simplicity The Laws of Nature however govern them still
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
any more dispute ran herself through the Body with a Sword Vibius Virius despayring of the safty of his City beseig'd by the Romans and of their mercy in the last deliberation of his Cities Senat after many Remonstrances conducing to that end concluded that the most Noble means to escape Fortune was by their own hands telling them that the Enemy would have them in honor and Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he had abandoned inviting those who approv'd of his advice to go take a good supper he had ready at home where after they had eaten well they would drink togeather of what he had prepar'd a beverage said he that will deliver our Bodies from torments our Souls from injury and our Eyes and Ears from the sence of so many hateful mischiefs as the Conquer'd are to suffer from cruel and implacable Conquerours I have said he taken order for fit persons to throw our Bodies into a funeral pile before my door so soon as we are dead Enow approv'd this high resolution few imitated it seaven and twenty Senators follow'd him who after having tri'd to drown the thought of this fatal determination in Wine ended the feast with the mortal Mess and embracing one another after they had jointly deplor'd the misfortune of their Country some retir'd home to their own houses others staid to be burnt with Vibius in his funeral Pyre and were all of them so long a dying the vapour of the Wine having prepossest the Veines and by that means deferring the effect of the Poison that some of them were within an hour of seeing the Enemy within the walls of Capua which was taken the next morning and of undergoing the miseries they had at so dear a rate endeavour'd to evade Taurea Jubellius another Citizen of the same Country the Consul Fulvius returning from the shameful butcherie he had made of two hundred twenty five Senators call'd him back feircely by his name and having made him stop give the word said he that some body may dispatch me after the Massacre of so many others that thou maist boast to have kill'd a much more valiant Man than thyself Fulvius disdaining him as a man out of hiâ— wits as also having received Letters from Rome contrary to the inhumanity of this Execution which tied his hands Jubellius proceeded since that my Country being taken my freinds dead and having with my own hands slaine my wife and children to rescue them from desolation of this ruine I am deni'd to die the death of my fellow-Citizens let us borrow from vertue the vengeance of this hated life and therewithal drawing a short sword he carried conceal'd about him he ran it thorough his own Bosome falling down backward and expiring at the Consuls feet Alexander laying Seige to a City of the Indies those within finding themselves very hardly set put on a vigorouâ— resolution to deprive him of the pleasure 〈◊〉 his Victory and accordingly burnt themselveâ— in general togeather with their City in despite of his humanity A new kind of Warre where the Enemies sought to save them and they 〈◊〉 lose themselves doing to make themselves sure of death all that men do to secure their lives Astapa a City of Spain finding it seâ—â— weak in walls and defence to withstand the Romans the Inhabitants made a heap of alâ— their riches and furniture in the publick place and having rang'd upon this heap all the woâ—men and children and pil'd them round witâ— wood and other combustible matter to take suddain Fire and left fifty of their young meâ— for the Execution of that whereon they haâ—â— resolv'd They made a deperate sally where for want of power to overcome they caus'd themselves to be every man slain The fifty after having Massacred every living Soul throughout the whole City and put Fire to this Pile threw themselves lastly into it finishing their generous liberty rather after an insensible than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner giving the Enemy to understand that if fortune had been so pleas'd they had as well the courage to snatch from them Victory as they had to frustrate and render it dreadful and even mortal to those who allured by the splendor of the Gold melting in this flame having approcht it a great number were there suffocated and burnt being kept up from retiring by the crow'd that follow'd after The Abideans being prest by King Philip put on the same resolution but being curbed so short they could not put it in effect the King who abhor'd to see the temerarious precipitation of this Execution the treasure and movables that they had variously condemn'd to Fire and water being first seized drawing off his Souldiers graunted them three days time to kill themselves in that they might do it with more order and at greater ease which space they fill'd with Blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excess of all hostil cruelty So that not so much as any one Soul was left alive that had power to destroy it self There are infinite examples of like Popular conclusions which seem the more feirce and cruel by how much the effect is more universal and yet are really less than when singly executed What arguments and persuasion cannot make upon every individual man they can do upon all the ardour of Society ravishing particular judgments The condemn'd who would live to be executed in the Reign of Tiberius forfeited their goods and were denied the riteâ— of Sepulture those who by killing themselves did anticipate it were enterred and had liberty to dispose of their Estates by Will But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good I desire says St. Paul to be with Christ and who shall rid me of these bands Cleombrotus Ambraciota having read Plato's Phaedo entred into so great a desire 〈◊〉 the life to come that without any other occasion he threw himself into the Sea By which it appears how improperly we call this voluntary dissolution despair to which the eagerness of hope does often encline us and ofteâ— a calme and temperate desire proceeding from a mature and considerate judgment Jacquâ— du Castel Bishop of Soissons in St. Lewis his foreign expedition seing the King and whole Army upon the point of returning into France leaving the affairs of Religion imperfect tool a resolution rather to go into Paradise wherefore having taken solemn leave of his freinds he charg'd alone in the sight of every onâ— into the Enemies Army where he was presently cut to peices In a certain Kingdom 〈◊〉 the new discover'd World upon a day of soâ—lemn Procession when the Idol they adore is drawn about in publick upon a Chariot of wonderful greatness besides that several are then seen cutting of cantells of their quick flesh to offer to him there are a number of others who prostrate themselves upon the place causing themselves to be crusht and broke to peices with the weighty wheels to obtain the veneration of Sanctity after
of very good Understanding once did that he hoarded up Wealth not to extract any other fruit and use from his Parsimony but to make himself honour'd and sought to by his own Relations and that Age having depriv'd him of all other Forces it was the only remaining Remedy to maintain his Authority in his Family and to keep him from being neglected and despis'd by all the World and in truth not only old age but all other imbecillity according to Aristotle is the Promoter of Avarice This is something but it is Physick for a Disease that a man should prevent A Father is very miserable that has no other hold of his Childrens Affection than the need they have of his Amstance if that can be call'd Affection he must render himself worthy to be respected by his Vertue and Wisdom and belov'd by his Bounty and the sweetness of his Manners Even the very Ashes of a rich Matter have their Value and we are wont to have the Bones and Relicks of worthy Men in regard and reverence No old Age can be so ruinous and offensive in a man who has past his Life in Honour but it must be Venerable especially to his Children the Soul of which he must have train'd up to their Duty by Reason not by Necessity and the Need they have of him nor by roughness and force errat longè mea quidem sententia Qui imperium credat esse gravius aut stabilius Vi quod fit quà m illud quod amicitia adjungitur And he does mainly vary from my sence Who thinks the Empire gain'd by violence More absolute and durable than that Which gentleness and friendship do create I condemn all Violence in the Education of a tender Soul that is design'd for Honour and Liberty There is I know not what of Servile in Rigour and Restraint and I am of opinion that what is not to be done by Reason Prudence and Address is never to be effected by Force I my self was brought up after that manner and they tell me that in all my first Age I never felt the Rod but twice and then very easily I have practis'd the same Method with my Children who all of them died at Nurse but Leonor my onely Daughter is arriv'd to the age of six years and upward without other Correction for her Childish Faults her Mothers Indulgence easily concurring than Words only and those very gentle In which kind of proceeding though my end and expectation should be both frustrated there are other Causes enough to lay the Fault on without blaming my Discipline which I know to be natural and just and I should in this have yet been more Religious towards the Males as born to less Subjection and more free and I should have made it my business to swell their Hearts with Ingenuity and Freedom I have never observ'd other effects of Whipping unless to render them more cowardly or more wilful and obstinate Do we desire to be belov'd of our Children Will we remove from them all occasion of wishing our Death though no occasion of so horrid a Wish can either be just or excusable Nullum scelus rationem habet let us reasonably accommodate their Lives with that is in our power In order to this we should not marry so young that our Age shall in a manner be confounded with theirs for this inconvenience plunges us into many very great Difficulties I say the Gentry of the Nation who are of a condition wherein they have little to do and live upon their Revenues only For elsewhere where the Life is dedicated to profit the plurality and numbers of Children is an encrease to the good husbandry and they are as so many new Tools and Instruments wherewith to grow rich I married at three and thirty years of Age and concur in the opinion of thirty five which is said to be that of Aristotle Plato will have no body marry before thirty but he has reason to laugh at those who undertake the work of Marriage after five and fifty and condem their Off-spring as unworthy of Aliment and Life Thales gave to this the truest Limits who young and being importun'd by his Mother to Marry answered That it was too soon and being grown into years and urg'd again That it was too late A man must deny opportunity to every importunate Action The ancient Gauls look'd upon it as a very horrid thing for a man to have had Society with a woman before twenty years of age and strictly recommended to the men who design'd themselves for War the keeping their Virginity till well grown in years forasmuch as Courage is abated and diverted by the use of Women Ma hor congiunto à giovinetta sposa Lieto homai de figli era invilito Negli affetti di padre di marito But now being married to a fair young wife He 's quite faln off from his old course of life His metle is grown rusty and his care His Wife and Children do betwixt them share Muleasses King of Tunis he whom the Emperour Charles the Fifth restor'd to his Kingdom reproacht the Memory of his Father Mahomet with the Frequentation of Women styling him Loose Effeminate and a Getter of Children The Greek History observes of Jecus the Tarentine of Chryso Astiplus Diopompus and others that to keep thir Bodies in order for the Olympick Games and such like Exercises they deny'd themselves during that preparation all Commerce with Venus In a certain Country of the Spanish Indies men were not admitted to marry till after Fourty years of Age and yet the Girls were allowed to go to 't at Ten. 'T is not time for a Gentleman of Five and thirty years old to give place to his Son who is Twenty he being himself in a condition to serve both in the Expeditions of War and in the Court of his Prince has himself need of all his Equipage and yet doubtless ought to allow his Son a share but not so great a one as wholly to disfurnish himself and for such a one the saying that Fathers have ordinarily in their mouths That they will not put off their Cloaths before they go to bed is proper enough But a Father over-worn with Age and Infirmities and depriv'd by his weakness and want of health of the common Society of men wrongs himself and his to rake together a great Mass of useless Treasure He has liv'd long enough if he be wise to have a mind to strip himself to go to bed not to his very Shirt I confess but to that and a good warm Night-Gown the remaining Pomps of which he has no further use he ought voluntarily to surrender to those to whom by the order of Nature they belong 'T is reason he should refer the use of those things to them seeing that Nature has reduc'd him to such an Estate that he cannot enjoy them himself otherwise there is doubtless ill nature and envy in the case The greatest
that has lost her Rudder Which Plutarch affirms to have seen in the Island of Anticyra There is a like Society betwixt the little Bird call'd a Wren and the Crocodile the Wren serves for a Centinel over this great Animal And if the Ichneumon his mortal Enemy approach to fight him this little Bird for fear lest he should surprize him a sleep both with his Voice and Bill rouses him and gives him notice of his Danger He feeds of this Monsters Leavings who receives him familiarly into his Mouth suffering him to pick in his Jaws and betwixt his Teeth and thence to pick out the Bits of Flesh that remain and when he has a mind to shut his Mouth he first gives the Bird warning to go out by closing it by little and little without bruising or doing it any harm at all The Shell-Fish call'd a Naker lives also with the Shrimp in the same Intelligence a little sort of Animal of the Lobster kind serving him in the Nature of a Porter sitting at the opening of the Shell which the Naker keeps always gaping and open till the Shrimp sees some little Fish proper for their Prey within the hollow of the Shell for then she enters too and pinches the Naker so to the Quick that she is forc'd to close her Shell where they two together devour the Prey they have trapt in their Fort. In the manner of living of the Tunnies we observe a singular Knowledge of the three parts of Mathematicks As to Astrologie they teach it Men for they stay in the Place where they are surpriz'd by the Brumal Solstice and never stir from thence till the next Equinox For which Reason Aristotle himself attributes to them this Science As to Geometrie and Arithmetick they always form their Body in the Figure of a Cube every way Square and make up the Body of a Battalion solid close and environ'd round with six equal Sides So that swimming in this square Order as large behind as before whoever in seeing them can count one Rank may easily number the whole Troop by reason that the Depth is equal to the Breadth and the Breadth to the Length As to Magnanimity it will be hard to give a better Instance of that than in the Example of the great Dog sent to Alexander the Great from the Indies They first brought him a Stag to Encounter next a Boar and after that a Bear all which he slighted and disdain'd to stir from his place but when he saw a Lyon he then immediately rous'd himself evidently manifesting that he declar'd that alone worthy to enter the Lists with him As to what concerns Repentance and the acknowledgment of Faults 't is reported of an Elephant that having in the impetuosity of his Rage kill'd his Reeper he fell into so extream a Sorrow that he would never after Eat but starv'd himself to Death And as to Clemency 't is said of a Tiger the most inhuman of all Beasts that a Kid having been put in to him he suffered two days Hunger rather than hurt it and the third broke the Grate he was shut up in to go seek elswhere for Prey so unwilling he was to fall upon the Kid his Familiar and his Guest And as to the Laws of Familiarity and Agreement form'd by Conversation it ordinarily happens that we bring up Cats Dogs and Hares tame together But that which Seamen experimently know and particularly in the Cilician Sea of the Quality of the Halcyons does surpass all human Thought Of what kind of Animal has Nature ever so much honour'd the Sitting Enlivening and Disclosing The Poets indeed say that one only I 'll of Delos that before was a floating Island was fix'd for the Service of Latona's lying in but God has order'd that the whole Ocean should be stay'd made Stable and smooth'd without Waves without Winds or Rain whil'st the Halcyon broods upon her Young which is just about the Solstice the shortest day of the Year so that by her Privilege we have seaven Days and seven Nights in the very heart of Winter wherein we may sayl without Danger Their Females never have to do with any other Male but their own whom they always serve and assist without ever forsaking him all their Lives If he happen to be weak and broaken with Age they take him upon their Shoulders carry him from place to place and serve him to Death But the most Inquisitive into the Secrets of Nature could never yet arrive at the Knowledg of the wonderful Fabrick and Architecture wherewith the Halcyon builds her Nest for his little ones nor guess at the matter Plutarch who has seen and handled many of them thinks it is the Bones of some Fish which she joines and binds together interlacing them some lengthwise and others across and adding Ribs and Hoopes in such manner that she formes at last a round Vessel fit to Launch which being done and the Building finished she carries it to the Wash of the Beach where the Sea beating gently against it shews her where she is to mend what is not well jointed and knit and where better to Fortify the Seams that are leaky and that open at the beating of the Waves and on the contrary what is well built and has had the due finishing the beating of the Waves do so close and bind together that it is not to be broken or crack'd by Blows either of Stone or Iron without very much ado And that which is more to be admired is the Proportion and Figure of the Cavity within which is compos'd and proportioned after such a manner as not possible to receive or admit any other thing than the Bird that built it For to any thing else it is so impenetrable close and shut that nothing can enter not so much as the Water of the Sea See here a very clear Description of this Building and borrowed from a very good Hand and yet methinks it does not give us sufficient Light into the Difficulty of this Architecture Now from what Vanity can it proceed to Despise and disdainfully to Interpret Effects that we can neither imitate nor comprehend To pursue a little further this Equality and Correspondence betwixt us and Beasts the Privilege our Soul so much glorifies herself upon of bringing all things she conceives to her own Law of stripping all things that come to her of their mortal and corporal Qualities of ordering and placing things she conceives worthy her taking notice of stripping and devesting them of their corruptible Qualities and making them to lay aside Length Breadth Depth Weight Colour Smell Roughness Smoothness Hardness Softness and all sensible Accidents and mean and superfluous Vestments to accommodate them to her own immortal and spiritual Condition As Rome and Paris for Example that I have in my Fancy Paris that I imagine I imagine and conceive it without Greatness and without Place without Stone without Plaister and without Wood This very same
are able to take were capable or the Force of our Understanding sufficient to participate of Beatitude or Eternal Pains We should then tell him from Human Reason If the Pleasures thou dost promise us in the other Life are of the same kind that I have injoy'd here below this has nothing in common with Infinity Though all my five Natural Senses should be even loaded with Pleasure and my Soul full of all the Contentment it could hope or desire we know what all this amounts to all this would be nothing If there be any thing of mine there there is nothing Divine if this be no more than what may belong to our present Condition it cannot be of any value All Contentment of Mortals is mortal Even the Knowledge of our Parents Children and Friends if that can effect and delight us in the other World if there that still continue a satisfaction to us we still remain in earthly and finite Conveniences We cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of these High and Divine Promises if we could in any sort conceive them To have a worthy Imagination of them we must imagine them inimaginable inexplicable and incomprehensible and absolutely another thing than those of our miserable experience Eye hath not seen saith St. Paul nor ear heard neither have entred into the Heart of Man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him And if to render us capable our being be reform'd and chang'd as thou Plato sayst in thy Purifications it ought to be so extream and total a Change that by Physical Doctrine it will be no more Hector erat tunc cùm bello certabat at ille Tractus ab Aemonio non erat Hector equo He Hector was whilst he could fight but when Drag'd by Achilles Steeds no Hector then It must be something else that must receive these Recompences quod mutatur dissolvitur interit ergo Trajiciuntur enim partes atque ordine migrant What 's chang'd dissolv'd is and doth therefore dye For parts are mixt and from their Order fly For in Pythagoras his Metempsycosis and the change of Habitation that he imagin'd in Souls can we believe that the Lyon in whom the Soul of Caesar is inclos'd does espouse Caesar's Passions or that the Lyon is he For if it was still Caesar they would be in the right who controverting this Opinion with Plato reproach him that the Son might be seen to ride his Mother transform'd into a Mule and the like Absurdities And can we believe that in the Mutations that are made of the Bodies of Animals into others of the same kind that the new Commers are not other than their Predecessors From the Ashes of a Phoenix a Worm they say is engendred and from that another Phoenix who can imagine that this second Phoenix is not other than the first We see our Silk-worms as it were dye and wither and from this wither'd Body a Butterflie is produced and from that another Worm how ridiculous would it be to imagine that this were still the first That which has once ceas'd to be is no more Nec si materiam nostram collegerit aetas Post obitum rursumque redegerit ut sit a nunc est Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum Interrupta semel cùm sit repetentia nostra Neither though time should gather and restore Our Matter to the Form it was before And give again new Light to see withal Would that new Figure us concern at all Or we again ever the same be seen Our Being having interrupted been And Plato when thou saist in another place that it shall be the Spiritual part of Man that will be concern'd in the Fruition of the Recompences of another Life thou tellest us a thing wherein there is as little appearance of Truth Scilicet avolsis radicibus ut neque ullam Dispicere ipse oculus rem seorsum corpore toto No more than Eyes once from their Opticks torn Can ever after any thing discern For by this account it would no more be Man nor consequently us who should be concern'd in this Enjoyment For we are compos'd of two principally Essential Parts the separation of which is the Death and Ruin of our Being Inter enim jacta est vitai pausa vagèque Deerarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes When Life 's extinct all Motions of Sence Are ta'ne away dispers'd and banish'd thence We cannot say that the Man suffers much when the Worms feed upon his Members and that the Earth consumes them Et nihil hoc ad nos qui coitu conjugiòque Corporis atque animae consistimus uniter apti What 's that to us who longer feel not Pain Than Body and Soul united do remain Moreover upon what Foundation of their Justice can the Gods take notice of or reward Man after his Death for his good and vertuous Actions since it was they themselves that put them in the way and mind to do them And why should they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones since themselves have created him in so frail a condition and what with one Glaunce of their Will they might prevent him from falling Might not Epicurus with great colour of Human Reason object that to Plato did he not often save himself with this Sentence That it is impossible to establish any thing certain of the immortal Nature by the Mortal She does nothing but err throughout but especially when she meddles with Divine things Who does more evidently perceive this than we For although we have given her certain and infallible Principles and though we have inlightned her Steps with the Sacred Lamp of Truth that it has pleas'd God to communicate to us we daily see nevertheless that if she swerve never so little from the ordinary Path and that she strays from or wander out of the way set out and beaten by the Church how soon she loses confounds and fetters her self tumbling and floating in this vast turbulent and waving Sea of Human Opinions without restraint and without any determinate end So soon as she loses that Great and Common Road she enters into a Labyrinth of a thousand several Paths Man cannot be any thing but what he is nor imagine beyond the reach of his Capacity 'T is a greater Presumption says Plutarch in them who are but Men to attempt to speak and discourse of the Gods and Demi-Gods than it is in a Man utterly ignorant of Musick to judge of Singing or in a Man who never saw a Camp to dispute about Arms and Martial Affairs presuming by some light Conjecture to understand the effects of an Art he is totally a Stranger to Antiquity I believe thought to put a Complement upon and to add something to the Divine Grandeur in assimilating it to Man investing it with his Faculties and adorning it with his ugly Humors and more
imprinted in humane kind by the condition of their own proper Being and those some reckon three some four some more and some less a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they are so unfortunate for what can I call it else but misfortune that of so infinite a number of Laws there should not be found one at least that Fortune and the temerity of Chance has suffered to be universally received by the consent of all Nations They are I say so miserable that of these three or four select Laws there is not so much as one that is not contradicted and disowned not only by one Nation but by many Now the only likely sign by which they can argue or infer some Laws to be Natural is the universality of Approbation for we should without doubt follow that which Nature had truly ordain'd us and not only every Nation but every particular man would resent the Force and Violence that any one should do him who would tempt him to any thing contrary to this Law Let them produce me but one of this Condition Protagoras and Aristo gave no other Essence to the Justice of Laws than the Authority and Opinion of the Legislator and that these laid aside the honest and the good would lose their Qualities and remain empty Names of indifferent things Thrasymachus in Plato is of Opinion that there is no other Right but the Convenience of the Superiour There is not any thing wherein the World is so various as in Laws and Customs such a thing is abominable here which is elsewhere in Esteem as in Lacedemonia the dexterity of stealing Marriages within the forbidden Degrees are capitally interdicted amongst us they are else-where in Honour Gentes esse feruntur In quibus nato genitrix nata Parenti Jungitur pietas geminato crescit amore There are some Nations in the World 't is said Where Fathers Daughters Sons their Mothers wed And their affections still do higher rise More firm and constant by these double ties The murther of Infants murther of Fathers communication of Wives traffick of Robberies licence in all sorts of Voluptuousness Finally there is nothing so extream that is not allowed by the Custom and the common Usance of some Nation or other It is credible that there are natural Laws but they are lost in us this fine humane Reason every where so insinuating it self to govern and command as to shuffle and confound the face of things according to it 's own vanity and inconstancy Nihil itaque amplius nostrum est quod nostrum dico artis est Therefore nothing is any more truly ours what we call ours belongs to Art Subjects have divers lusters and divers considerations and from thence the diversity of Opinions principally proceed One Nation considers a Subject in one aspect and stops there another takes it from another prospect There is nothing of greater horror to be imagin'd than for a man to eat his Father and yet the People whose ancient Custom it was so to do look'd upon it as a testimony of Piety and natural Affection seeking thereby to give their Progenitors the most worthy and honorable Sepulture storing up in themselves and as it were in their own Marrow the Bodies and Relicks of their Fathers and in some sort regenerating them by Transmutation into their Living flesh by means of nourishment and digestion It is easie to consider what a Cruelty and Abomination it must have appear'd to be to men possest and imbute with this superstition to throw their Fathers remains to the corruption of the Earth and the nourishment of Beasts and Worms Lycurgus consider'd in Theft the vivacity diligence boldness and dexterity of purloining any thing from our Neighbours and the Utility that redounded to the Publick that every one might look more narrowly to the conservation of what was his own and believed that from his double Institution of Assaulting and Defending advantage was to be made for Military Discipline which was the principal Science and Vertue to which he would inure that Nation of greater consideration than the disorder and injustice of taking another man's Goods Dionysius the Tyrant offered Plato a Robe of the Persian fashion long damask'd and perfum'd Plato refus'd it saying That being born a man he would not willingly dress himself in Womans Cloths but Aristippus accepted it with this Answer That no Accoustrement could corrupt a chast Courage His Friends reproaching him with meanness of Spirit for laying it no more to heart that Dionysius had spit in his Face Fisher-men said he suffer themselves to be dash'd with the waves of the Sea from head to foot to catch a Gudgeon Diogenes was washing Cabidges and seeing him pass by If thou couldst live on Cabidge said he thou wouldst not fawn upon a Tyrant To whom Aristippus replied And if thou knewest how to live amongst men thou wouldst not be washing Cabidges Thus Reason finds apparence for divers effects 'T is a Pot with two Ears that a man may take by the right or left bellum o terra hospiti portas Bello armantur equi bellum haec armenta minantur Sed tamen iidem olim curru succedere sueti Quadrupedes fraena jugo concordia ferre Spes est pacis O Earth it is thy Womb that War does bear Horses are arm'd for Heards does threaten War And yet these Brutes having with patience bore The yoak and yielded to the Reins before There 's hopes of Peace Solon being importun'd by his Friends not to shed powerless and unprofitable Tears for the death of his Son It is for that reason that I the more justly shed them said he because they are powerless and unprofitable Socrates his Wife exasperated her grief by this Circumstance Oh how unjustly do these wicked Judges put him to Death Why replied he hadst thou rather they should justly execute me We have our Ears bor'd the Greeks look'd upon that as a mark of slavery We retire in private to enjoy our Wives the Indians do it in publick The Scythians immolated Strangers in their Temples elsewhere Temples were a Refuge Inde furor vulgi quod numina vicinorum Odit quisque locus cum solos credat habendos Esse Deos quos ipse colit This 't is the popular Fury that creates That all their Neighbours Gods each Nation hates And that the more because conceive they do None but their own should be reputed so I have heard of a Judge that where he met with a sharp conflict betwixt Bartolus and Baldus and some point controverted with many Contrarieties writ in the Margent of his Book A question for a Friend that is to say that Truth was there so controverted and disputed that in a like Cause he might favour which of the Parties he thought fit 'T was only for want of wit that he did not write A question for a Friend throughout The Advocates and Judges of
was oblig'd in Honour to see the end 'T is far beyond not fearing Death to taste and relish it The Story of the Philosopher Cleanthes is very like this He had his Gums swell'd and rotten his Physicians advis'd him to great Abstinence having fasted two days he was so much better that they pronounc'd him cur'd and permitted him to his ordinary course of Diet he on the contrary already tasting some sweetness in this Faintness of his would not be persuaded to go back but resolv'd to proceed and to finish what he had so far advanc'd Tullius Marcellinus a Young-man of Rome having a mind to anticipate the hour of his Destiny to be rid of a Disease that was more trouble to him than he was willing to endure though his Physicians assur'd him of a certain tho not sudden Cure call'd a Council of his Friends to consult about it of which some says Seneca gave him the Counsel that out of Unmanliness they would have taken themselves others out of Flattery such as they thought he would best like but a Stoick said thus to him Do not concern thy self Marcellinus as if thou did'st deliberate of a thing of Importance 't is no great matter to live thy Servants and Beasts live but it is a great thing to dye handsomly wisely and constantly do but think how long thou hast done the same thing eat drink and sleep drink sleep and eat We incessantly wheel in the same circle not only ill and insupportable Accidents but even the saciety of living inclines a man to desire to dye Marcellinus did not stand in need of a man to advise but of a man to assist him his Servants were afraid to meddle in the Business but this Philosopher gave them to understand that Domesticks are suspected even when it is in doubt whether the Death of the Master were voluntary or no otherwise that it would be of as ill example to hinder him as to kill him forasmuch as Invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti Who makes a man to live against his Will As cruel is as if he did him kill He afterwards told Marcellinus that it would not be indecent as the remainder of Tables when we have done is given to the Assistants so Life being ended to distribute something to those who have been our Servants Now Marcellinus was of a free and liberal Spirit he therefore divided a certain sum of Money amongst his Attendants and conforted them As to the rest he had no need of Steel nor of Blood He was resolv'd to go out of this Life and not to run out of it not to escape from Death but to essay it And to give himself leisure to trifle with it having forsaken all manner of Nourishment the third day following after having caus'd himself to be sprinkled with warm Water he fainted by degrees and not without some kind of Pleasure as he himself declar'd In earnest such as have been acquainted with these Faintings proceeding from weakness do say that they are therein sensible of no manner of Pain but rather feel a kind of Delight as in a Passage to Sleep and Rest. These are studied and digested Deaths But to the end that Cato only may furnish out the whole Example of Vertue it seems as if his good Destiny had put his ill one into his hand with which he gave himself the Blow seeing he had the leisure to confront and struggle with Death reinforcing his Courage in the greatest danger instead of letting it go less And if I had been to represent him in his supream Station I should have done it in the posture of tearing out his bloody Bowels rather than with his Sword in his hand as did the Statuaries of his time for this second Murther was much more furious than the first CHAP. XIV That the Mind hinders it self 'T IS a pleasant Imagination to fancy a Mind exactly balanc'd betwixt two equal desires for doubtless it can never pitch upon either forasmuch as the Choice and Application would manifest an inequality of esteem and were we set betwixt the Bottle and the Hamme with an equal Appetite to drink and eat there would doubtless be no remedy but we must dye of Thirst and Hunger To provide against this Inconvenience the Stoicks when they are ask'd whence this Election in the Soul of two indifferent things does proceed and that makes us out of a great number of Crowns rather take one than another there being no reason to incline us to such a preference makes Answer That this movement of the Soul is extraordinary and irregular that enters into us by a strange accidental and fortuitous Impulse It might rather methinks be said that nothing presents it self to us wherein there is not some difference how little soever and that either by the Sight or Touch there is always some choice that tho it be imperceptibly tempts and attracts us Whoever likewise shall presuppose a packthread equally strong throughout it is utterly impossible it should break for where will you have the breaking to begin and that it should break altogether is not in nature Whoever also should hereunto joyn the Geometrical Propositions that by the certainty of their Demonstrations conclude the Contained to be greater than the Containing the Center also to be as great as the Circumference and that find out two Lines incessantly approaching each other and that yet can never meet and the Philosopher's Stone and the Quadrature of Circle where the Reason and the Effect are so opposite might peradventure find some Argument to second this bold Saying of Pliny Solum certum nihil esse certi homine nihil miserius aut superbius That it is only certain there is nothing certain and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than Man CHAP. XV. That our Desires are augmented by difficulty THere is no Reason that has not his contrary say the wisest of Philosophers which puts me upon ruminating on the excellent Saying one of the Antients alledges for the contempt of Life No Good can bring Pleasure if not that for the loss of which we are before-hand prepared In aequo est dolor amissae rei timor amittendae The grief of losing a thing and the fear of losing it are equal Meaning by that that the Fruition of Life cannot be truly pleasant to us if we are in fear of losing it It might however be said on the contrary that we hug and embrace this Good by so much the more tenderly and with so much greater Affection by how much we see it the less assur'd and fear to have it taken from us for as it is evident that Fire burns with greater Fury when Cold comes to mix with it so our Wills are more obstinate by being oppos'd Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris Non esset Danae de Jove facta parens A brazen Tow'r if Danae had not had She ne're by Jove had been a
for necessary things Divinity treats amply and more pertinently of this Subject but I am not much vers'd in it Chrisippus and Diogenes were the first and the most constant Authors of the contempt of Glory and maintain'd that amongst all Pleasures there was none more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds from the Approbation of others And in truth Experience makes us sensible of many very hurtful Treasons in it There is nothing that so poisons Princes as flattery nor any thing whereby wicked men more easily obtain Credit and Favour with them nor Pandarism so proper and usually made use of to corrupt the Chastity of Women than to wheedle and entertain them with their own Prayers The first Charm the Syrens made use of to allure Vlysses is of this Nature Deca vers nous deca o tres-louable Ulysse Et le plus grand honneur dont la Grece fleurise To us noble Vlysses this way this Thou greatest Ornament and pride of Greece These Philosophers said that all the Glory of the World was not worth an understanding mans holding out his Finger to obtain it Gloria quantalibet quid erit si Gloria tantum est What 's Glory in the high'st degree If it no more but Glory be I say for it alone for it often brings several commodities along with it for which it may justly be desir'd it acquires us good will and renders us less subject and expos'd to the injuries of others and the like It was also one of the principal Doctrines of Epicurus for this Precept of his Sect Conceal thy Life that forbids men to incumber themselves with Offices and publick Negotiations does also necessarily presuppose a contempt of Glory which is the worlds approbation of those actions we produce in publick He that bids us conceal our selves and to have no other Concern but for our selves and that will not have us known to others would much less have us honour'd and glorifi'd He advises Idomeneus also not in any sort to regulate his Actions by the common reputation or opinion if not to avoid the other accidental inconveniences that the contempt of men might bring upon him Those Discourses are in my opinion very true and rational but we are I know not how double in our selves which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe and cannot disengage our selves from what we condem Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus they are great and worthy of such a Philosopher and yet they carry some marks of the recommendation of his name and of that humour he had decried by his Precepts Here is a Letter that he dictated a little before his last gasp Epicurus to Hermachus health WHilst I was passing over the happy and last day of my Life I writ this but at the same time afflicted with such a pain in my Bladder and Bowels that nothing can be greater But it was recompenc'd with the Pleasure the remembrance of my Inventions and Doctrines suggested to my Soul Now as the affection thou hast ever from thy Infancy borne towards me and Philosophy does require take upon thee the Protection of Metrodorus his Children This is the Letter And that which makes me interpret that the Pleasure he says he had in his Soul concerning his Inventions has some reference to the Reputation he hop'd for after his Death is the manner of his Will In which he gives order that Aminomachus and Timocrates his Heirs should every January defray the Expence for the Celebration of his Nativity that Hermachus should appoint and also the expence that should be made the twentieth of every Moon in entertaining of the Philosophers his Friends who should assemble in Honour of the Memory of him and Metrodorus Carneades was Head of the contrary Opinion and maintain'd that Glory was to be desir'd for it self even as we embrace our Posthumes for themselves having no Knowledge nor Enjoyment of them This Opinion was more universally follow'd as those commonly are that are most suitable to our Inclinations Aristotle gives it the first place amongst eternal Goods and avoids as too extream Vices the immoderate either seeking or evading it I believe that if we had the Books Cicero has writ upon this Subject we should there find fine Stories for he was so possess'd with this Passion that if he had dar'd I think he could willingly have fallen into the excess that others did that Virtue it self was not to be coveted but upon the account of the Honour that alwayes attends it Paulum sepultae distat inertiae Celata virtus Virtue if concealed doth Little differ from dead Sloth Which is an Opinion so false that I am vext it could ever enter into the Understanding of a man that was honour'd with the name of a Philosopher If this was true Men should not be Virtuous but in publick and he should be no further concern'd to keep the operation of the Soul which is the true seat of Vertue regular and in order than as they are to arrive at the knowledge of others Is there no more in it then but only slily and with Circumspection to do ill If thou knowest says Carneades of a Serpent lurking in a place where without suspicion a Person is going to sit down by whose Death thou expect'st an Advantage thou dost ill if thou dost not give him caution of his Danger and so much the more because the Action is to be known by none but thy self If we do not take up of our selves a rule of well doing if Impunity passes with us for Justice to how many sorts of Wickedness shall we every day abandon our selves I do not find what Sp. Peduceus did in faithfully restoring the Treasure that C. Plotius had committed to his sole Secrecy and Trust a thing that I have often done my self so commendable as I should think it an execrable baseness had we done otherwise And think it of good use in our dayes to introduce the Example of P. Sextilius Ruffus whom Cicero accuses to have enter'd upon an Inheritance contrary to his Conscience not only not against Law but even by the Determination of the Laws themselves And M. Crassus and Q. Hortensius who by reason of their Authority and Power having been call'd in by a Stranger to share in the Succession of a forg'd Will that so he might secure his own part satisfied themselves with having no hand in the Forgery and refus'd not to make their Advantage and to come in for a share secure enough if they could shrowd themselves from Accusations Witnesses and the Cognizance of the Laws Meminerint Deum se habere testem id est ut ego arbitror mentem suam Let them consider they have God to witness that is as I interpret it their own Consciences Vertue is a very vain and frivolous thing if it derives its recommendation from Glory And 't is to no purpose that we endeavour to give it
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
to a Helot who carried himself so insolently and audaciously towards him By the Gods said he if I was not angry I would immediately cause thee to be put to Death 'T is a Passion that is pleas'd with and flatters it self How oft being mov'd under a false cause if the Person offending makes a good Defence and presents us with a just excuse are we vext at Truth and Innocence it self In proof of which I remember a marvellous Example of Antiquity Piso otherwise a Man of very eminent Virtue being mov'd against a Souldier of his for that returning alone from Forrage he could give him no account where he had left a Companion of his took it for granted that he had kill'd him and presently condemn'd him to Death He was no sooner mounted upon the Gibbet but behold his wandring Companion arrives at which all the Army were exceedingly glad and after many embraces of the two Comrades the Hangman carried both the one and the other into Piso's Presence all the Assistants believing it would be a great Pleasure even to him himself but it prov'd quite contrary for through shame and spite his Fury which was not yet cool redoubled and by a subtlety which his Passion suddenly suggested to him he made three Criminal for having found one innocent and caus'd them all to be dispatch'd The first Souldier because Sentence had pass'd upon him The second who had lost his way because he was the Cause of his Companions Death and the Hangman for not having obey'd the Order bad been given him Such as have had to do with testy and obstinate Women may have experimented into what a Rage it puts them to oppose Silence and Coldness to their Fury and that a man disdains to nourish their Anger The Orator Celius was wonderfully cholerick by Nature and to one who sup't in his Company a man of a gentle and sweet Conversation and who that he might not move him approv'd and consented to all he said he impatient that his ill Humour should thus spend it self without aliment For the love of the Gods deny me something said he that we may be two Women in like manner are only angry that others may be angry again in imitation of the Laws of Love Phocion to one that interrupted his speaking by injurious and very opprobrious Words made no other return than silence and to give him full liberty and leisure to vent his spleen which he having accordingly done and the storm blown over without any mention of this disturbance he proceeded in his Discourse where he had left off before No answer can nettle a man like such a Contempt Of the most cholerick man in France anger is always an imperfection but more excusable in a Souldier for in that trade it cannot sometimes be avoided I must needs say that he is often the most patient man that I know and the most discreet in bridling his Passions which rises in him with so great Violence and Fury magno veluti cum flamma sonore Virgea suggeritur costis undantis aheni Exultanque aestu latices furit intus aquai Fumidus atque altè spumis exuberat amnis Nec jam se capit unda volat vapor ater ad auras As when into the boyling Caldron's side A crackling flame of Brush-wood is apply'd The bubbling Liquor there like springs are seen To swell and foam to higher Tides within Untill it does to overflowing rise And a fuliginous Vapour upward flies that he must of necessity cruelly constrain himself to moderate it and for my part I know no Passion which I could with so much Violence to my self attempt to cover and conceal I would not set Wisdom at so high a price and do not so much consider what he does as how much it costs him to do no worse Another boasted himself to me of the regularity and sweetness of his Manners which is in truth very singular to whom I replyed that it was indeed something especially in Persons of so eminent Quality as himself upon whom every one had their Eyes to present himself always well-temper'd to the World but that the principal thing was to make Provision for within and for himself and that it was not in my Opinion very well to order his Business inwardly to grate himself which I was affraid he did in putting on and outwardly maintaining the visor and regular Appearance A man incorporates Anger by concealing it as Diogenes told Demosthenes who for fear of being seen in a Tavern withdrew himself into it The more you retire the farther you enter in I would rather advise that a man should give his Servant a box of the Ear a little unseasonably than wrack his Fancy to represent this grave and compos'd Countenance and had rather discover my Passions than brood over them at my own expence they grow less in venting and manifesting themselves and 't is much better their point should wound others without than be turn'd towards our selves within Omnia vitia in aperto leviora sunt tunc perniciosissima quum simulata sanitate subsidunt All Vices are less dangerous when open to be seen and then most pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled Temper I admonish all those who have authority to be angry in my Family in the first place to manage their Anger and not to lavish it upon every occasion for that both lessens the value and hinders the Effect Rash and customary chafing runs into Custom and renders it self despis'd and that you lay out upon a Servant for a Theft is not felt because it is the same he has seen you a hundred times employ against him for having ill wash'd a Glass or set a Stool out of order Secondly that they are not angry to no purpose but make sure that their Reprehension reach him at whom they are offended for ordinarily they rail and bawl before he comes into their Presence and continue scolding an Age after he is gone Et secum petulans amentia certat And petulant madness with it self contends they attack his shadow and push the storm in place where no one is either chastised or interested but in the clamour of their Voice I likewise in Quarrels condemn those who huff and vapour without an Enemy those Rodomontades are to be reserv'd to discharge upon the offending Party Mugitus veluti cum prima in praelia taurus Terrificos ciet atque irasci in cornua tentat Arboris obnixus trunco ventosque lacessit Ictibus sparsa ad pugnam proludit arena Like angry Bulls that make the Valleys ring Prest to the fight with dreadful bellowing Whetting their Horns against the sturdy Oak Who with their kicking Heels the winds provoke And tossing up the Earth a Dust do raise For furious preludes to ensuing frays When I am angry my Anger is very sharp but withall very short and as private as I can I lose my self indeed in Promptness and Violence but not in
the most painful the most mortal and the most irremediable of all Diseases I have already had the tryal of five or six very long and very painful fits and yet I either flatter my self or there is even in this estate what is very well to be endur'd by a man who has his Soul free from the fear of Death and the Menaces Conclusions and Consequences which Physick is ever thundring in our Ears But the effect even of pain it self is not so sharp and intollerable as to put a man of understanding into impatience and despair I have at least this advantage by my Stone that what I could not hitherto wholly prevail upon my self to resolve upon as to reconciling and acquainting my self with Death it will perfect for the more it presses upon and importunes me I shall be so much the less afraid to dye I had already gone so far as only to love Life for Life's sake but my pain will dissolve this Intelligence and God grant that in the end should the sharpness of it be once greater then I shall be able to bear it does not throw me into the other no less vicious extream to desire and wish to dye Summum nec metuas diem nec optes Neither to wish nor fear to dye They are two Passions to be fear'd but the one has its remedy much nearer at hand than the other As to the rest I have always found the Precept that so exactly enjoyns a constant Countenance and so disdainful and indifferent a Comportment in the toleration of Infirmities to be meerly Ceremonial Why should Philosophy which only has respect to Life and its Effects trouble it self about these external Apparences Let us leave that Care to Histrios and Masters of Rhetorick that set so great a value upon our Gestures Let her in God's name allow this vocal Frailty if it be neither cordial nor stomachal to the Disease and permit the ordinary ways of expressing Grief by sighs sobs palpitations and turning pale that Nature has put out of our power And provided the Courage be undaunted and the Expressions not sounding of despair let her be satisfied What makes matter for the wringing of our hands if we do not wring our Thoughts She forms us for our selves not for others to be not to seem let her be satisfied with governing our Understandings which she has taken upon her the care of instructing that in the fury of the Cholick she maintains the Soul in a condition to know it self and to follow its accustom'd way contending with and enduring not meanly truckling under Pain mov'd and heated not subdu'd and conquer'd in the Contention but capable of Discourse and other things to a certain degree In so extream Accidents 't is Cruelty to require so exact a Composedness 'T is no great matter what Faces we cut if we find any ease by it if the Body find it self reliev'd by complaining let him go too if Agitation eases him let him tumble and toss at pleasure if he finds the Disease evaporate as some Physicians hold that it helps Women in delivery extreamly to cry out or if it do but amuse his Torments let him roar aloud Let us not command this Voice to sally but stop it not Epicurus does not only forgive his Sage for crying out in Torments but advises him to it Pugiles etiam quum feriunt in jactandis caestibus ingemiscunt quia profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur venitque plaga vehementior When men fight with Clubs they groan in laying on because the whole strength of Body goes along with the Voice and the blow is laid on with greater force We have enough to do to deal with the Disease without troubling our selves with these superfluous Rules which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see impatient in the assaults of this Infirmity for as to what concerns my self I have pass'd it over hitherto with a little better Countenance and contented my self with grunting without roaring out Not nevertheless that I put any great constraint upon my self to maintain this exterior Decency for I make little account of such an Advantage I allow herein as much as the Pain requires but either my Pains are not so excessive or I have more than ordinary Patience I complain I confess and am a little impatient in a very sharp fit but I do not arrive to such a degree of despair as he who with Ejulatu questu gemitu fremitibus Resonando multum flebiles voces refert Howling Roaring and a thousand noises Express'd his Torment in most dismal Voices I relish my self in the midst of my Dolor and have always found that I was in a Capacity to speak think and give a rational Answer as well as at any other time but not so coldly and indifferently being troubled and interrupted by the Pain When I am look'd upon by my Visiters to be in the greatest Torment and that they therefore forbear to trouble me I oft try my own strength and my self set some Discourse on foot the most remote I can contrive from my present condition I can do any thing upon a sudden endeavour but it must not continue long What pitty 't is I have not the Faculties of that Dreamer Cicero who dreaming he was lying with a Wench found he had discharg'd his Stone in the Sheets My Pains do strangely disappetite me that way In the intervals from this excessive Torment when my Uriters only languish without any great dolor I presently feel my self in my wonted state forasmuch as my Soul takes no other alarm but what is sensible and corporal which I certainly owe to the care I have had of preparing my self by Meditation against such Accidents laborum Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinaque surgit Omnia praecepi atque animo mecum ante peregi No face of Pain or Labour now can rise Which by its novelty can me surprize I 've been accustom'd all things to explore And been inur'd unto them long before I am a little roughly handled for a Learner and with a sudden and sharp alteration being fall'n in an instant from a very easie and happy condition of Life into the most uneasie and painful that can be imagin'd For besides that it is a Disease very much to be fear'd in it self it begins with me after a more sharp and severe manner than it uses to do with other men My Fits come so thick upon me that I am scarcely ever at ease and yet I have hitherto kept my mind so upright that provided I can still continue it I find my self in a much better condition of Life than a thousand others who have no Fever nor other Disease but what they create to themselves for want of meditation There is a certain sort of crafty Humility that springs from Presumption as this for Example that we confess our Ignorance in many things and are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are
artes â—xpoliuntur Nunc etiam augescunt nunc addita navigiis sunt Multa But sure the Nature of the World is strong Perfect and young nor can I think it long Since it beginning took because we know Arts still increase and still politer grow And many things in former times unknown Are added now to Navigation Our World has lately discover'd another and who will assure us that it is the last of his Brothers since the Daemons the Sybils and we our selves have been ignorant of this till now as large well peopled and fruitfull as this whereon we live and yet so raw and childish that we yet teach it its ABC 't is not above fifty years since it knew neither Letters Weights Measures Vestments Corn nor Vines It was then quite naked in the Mothers lap and only liv'd upon what she gave it If we rightly conclude of our end and this Poet of the youthfulness of that Age of his that other World will only enter into the Light when this of ours shall make its Exit The Universe will be Paralitick one Member will be useless another in vigour I am very much afraid that we have very much precipitated its declension and ruine by our contagion and that we have sold it our Opinions and our Arts at a very dear rate It was an infant World and yet we have not whipt and subjected it to our discipline by the advantage of our Valour and natural Forces neither have we won it by our Justice and Goodness nor subdu'd it by our Magnanimity Most of their Answers and the Negotiations we have had with them witness that they were nothing behind us in Pertinency and clearness of natural Understanding The astonishing magnificence of the Cities of Cusco and Mexico and amongst many other such like things the Garden of this King where all the Trees Fruits and Plants according to the order and stature they are in a Garden were excellently form'd in Gold as in his Cabinet were all the Animals bred upon the Earth and in the Seas of his Dominions and the beauty of their Manufactures in Jewels Feathers Cotton and Painting gave ample proof that they were as little inferiour to us in â—ndustry But as to what concerns Devotion observance of the Laws Bounty Liberality Loyally and plain dealing it was of Use to us that we had not so much as they for they have lost â—old and betray'd themselves by this advantage As to boldness and courage stability constancy against Pain Hunger and Death I should not fear to oppose the Examples I find amongst them to the most famous Examples of elder times that we find in our Records on this side of the World For as to those who have subdu'd them take but away the Slights and Artifices they practis'd to deceive them and the just astonishment it was to those Nations to see so sudden and unexpected an arrival of men with Beards differing in Language Religion Shape and Countenance from so remote a Part of the World and where they had never heard there was any habitation mounted upon great unknown Monsters against those who had never so much as seen a Horse or any other Beast train'd up to carry a man or any other loading shell'd in a hard and shining skin with a cutting and glittering Weapon in his hand against them who out of wonder at the brightness of a Looking-glass or a Knife would truck great Treasures of Gold and Pearl and who had neither Knowledge nor Matter with which at leisure they could penetrate our Steel to which may be added the Lightning and Thunder of our Pieces and Harquebuses enough to fright Caesar himself If surpriz'd with so little Experience and how against naked People if not where the invention of a little quilted Cotton was in use without other Arms at the most than Bows Stones Staves and Bucklers of Wood People surpriz'd under colour of Friendship and good Faith by the curiosity of seeing strange and unknown things take but away I say this disparity from the Conquerours and you take away all the occasion of so many Victories When I look upon that invincible ardour wherewith so many thousands of Men Women and Children have so often presented and thrown themselves into inevitable dangers for the defence of their Gods and Liberties that generous obstinacy to suffer all extremities and difficulties and even Death it self rather than submit to the Dominion of those by whom they had been so shamefully abus'd and some of them choosing rather to dye of hunger and fasting than to accept of nourishment from the hands of their so basely victorious Enemies I foresee that whoever would have attacqu'd them upon equal terms of Arms Experience and Number would have had a hard and peradventure a harder game to play than in any other War we have seen Why did not so noble a Conquest fall under Alexander or the ancient Greeks and Romans and so great a revolution and mutation of so many Empires and Nations fall into hands that might have rooted up and gently levell'd and made plain and smooth whatever was rough and savage amongst them and that might have cherish'd and propagated the good Seeds that Nature had there produc'd mixt not only with the Culture of Land and the Ornament of Cities the Arts of this part of the World in what was necessary but also the Greek and Roman Virtues with those that were Originals of the Country What a particular Reparation had it been to them and what a general good to the whole World had our first Examples and Deportments in those Parts allur'd those People to the Admiration and Imitation of Virtue and had begot betwixt them and us a fraternal Society and Intelligence How easie had it been to have made Advantage of Souls so innocent and so eager to learn having for the most part naturally so good Inclinations before Whereas on the contrary we have taken Advantage of their Ignorance and Inexperience with greater ease to incline them to Treachery Luxury Avarice and towards all sorts of Inhumanity and Cruelty by the Pattern and Example of our Manners Who ever enhanc'd the price of Merchandize at such a rate So many Cities levell'd with the Ground so many Nations exterminated so many millions of People fallen by the Edge of the Sword and the richest and most beautiful part of the World turn'd upside down for the Traffick of Pearl and Pepper Mechanick Victories Never did Ambition never did Animosities engage men against one another to such a degree of Hostility and miserable Calamity Certain Spaniards coasting the Sea in quest of their Mines landed in a fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled Country and there made to the Inhabitants their accustom'd Remonstrances that they were peaceable men who were come from a very remote Country and sent on the behalf of the King of Castile the greatest Prince of the habitable World to whom the Pope God's Vice-gerent upon Earth had given
fore-sight and thought do us no harm Just so do Physicians who throw us into Diseases to the end they may have whereon to lay out their Druggs and their Art If we have not known how to live 't is mystery to teach us to dye and make the end difform from all the rest If we have known how to live constantly and quietly we shall know how to dye so too They may boast as much as they please Tota Philosophorum Vita commentatio mortis est That the whole Life of a Philosopher is the Meditation of his Death But I fancy that though it be the end 't is not the aim of his Life 'T is his end his extremity but not nevertheless his object She ought her self to be to her self her own aim and design her true study is to order govern and suffer her self In the number of several other Offices that the general and principal Chapter of knowing how to live comprehends is this Article of knowing how dye and did not our fears give it weight one of the lightest too To judge of them by the utility and by the naked truth the lessons of simplicity are not much inferiour to those which the contrary Doctrine preaches to us Men are differing in sentiment and force we must lead them to their own good according to their Capacities and by various ways Quo me cumque rapit tempestas deferor hospes sworn to no mans words To this and that side I make tacks and bords Now plung'd in billows of the active Life At Virtues Anchor ride contemplative I never saw any Countryman of my Neighbours concern himself with the thought of with what countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour Nature teaches him not to dream of Death till he is dying and then he does it with a better grace than Aristotle upon whom Death presses with a double weight both of it self and of so long a premeditation And therefore it was the opinion of Caesar that the least premeditated Death was the easiest and the most happy Plus dolet quam necesse est qui ante dolet quam necesse est He grieves more than is necessary who grieves before it is necessary The sharpness of this imagination springs from our own curiosity Thus do we ever hinder our selves desiring to prevent and govern natural prescriptions 'T is only for Doctors to dine worst when in the best Health and that they have the best stomachs and to frown and be out of humour at the Image of Death The common sort stand in need of no remedy nor consolation but just in the shock and when the blow comes and consider no more than just what they endure Is it not then as we say that the stupidity and name of apprehension in the Vulgar gives them that patience in present Evils and that profound carelesness of future sinister Accidents That their Souls by being more gross and dull are less penetrable and not so easily mov'd if it be so let us henceforth in Gods name teach nothing but Ignorance 'T is the utmost fruit which the Sciences promise us to which this Stupidity so gently leads its Disciples We have no want of good Masters who are interpreters of natural simplicity Socrates shall be one For as I remember he speaks something to this purpose to the Judges who sate upon his Life and Death I am afraid my masters that if I intreat you to put me to death I shall confirm the Evidence of my Accusers which is that I pretend to be wiser than others as having some more secret knowledge of things that are above and below us I know very well that I have neither frequented nor known Death nor have ever seen any person that has try'd his Qualities from whom to inform my self Such as fear it presuppose they know it as for my part I neither know what it is nor what they do in the other World Death is peradventure an indifferent thing peradventure a thing to be desired 'T is nevertheless to be believ'd if it be a transmigration from one place to another that it is a bettering of ones condition to go live with so many great Persons deceas'd and to be exempt from having any more to do with unjust and corrupted Judges if it be an annihilation of our Being 't is yet a bettering of ones condition to enter into a long and peaceable night We find nothing more sweet in Life than a quiet Repose and a profound Sleep without Dreams The things that I know to be evil as to offend a mans Neighbour and to disobey ones Superiour whether it be God or Man I carefully avoid such as I do not know whether they be good or evil I cannot fear them If I go to dye and leave you alive the Gods alone only know whether it will go better either with you or me wherefore as to what concerns me you may do as you shall think fit but according to my method of advising just and profitable things I do affirm that you will do your Consciences more right to set me at liberty unless you see further into my cause than I. And judging according to my past actions both publick and private according to my intentions and according to the profit that so many of our Citizens both young and old daily extract from my Conversation and the fruit that you reap from me your selves you cannot more duely acquit your selves towards my merit than in ordering that my poverty consider'd I should be maintain'd in the Prytaneum at the Publick expence a thing that I have often known you with less reason grant to others Do not impute it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not according to the custom supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration I have both Friends and Kindred not being as Homer says begotten of a block or of a stone no more than others that are able to present themselves before 〈◊〉 in tears and mourning and I have three desolute children with which to move you to compassion But I should do a shame to our City at the Age I am and in the reputation of Wisdom wherein I now stand to appear in such an object form What would men say of the other Athenians I have always admonish'd those who have frequented my Lectures not to redeem their Lives by an indecent action and in any the Wars of my Countrey at Amphipolis Potidea Delia and other Expeditions where I have been I have effectually manifested how far I was from securing my safety by my shame I should moreover inâ—erest your Duty and should tempt you to unhandsome things for 't is not for my Prayers to persuade you but for the pure and solid reason of Justice You have sworn to the Gods to keep your selves upright and it would seem as if I suspected or would recriminate upon you should I not believe that you are so And I should give
blood to suffer strange contractions and convulsions by starts to let great tears drop from thine eyes to urine thick black and dreadful Water or to have it suppress'd by some sharp and craggy stone that cruelly pricks and tears the neck of the Bladder whilst all the while thou entertain'st the Company with an ordinary countenance drolling by fits with thy Servants making one in a continued discourse now and then excusing thy pain and making thy suffrance less than it is Dost thou call to mind the men of past times who so greedily sought Diseases to keep their Virtue in breath and exercise Put the case that Nature force and put thee on to this glorious School into which thou wouldst never have enter'd of thy own free will If thou tell'st me that it is a dangerous and mortal Disease what others are not For 't is a Physical cheat to except any and to say that they do not go directly to death what makes matter if they tend that way by accident and if they easily slide and slip into the path that leads us to it But thou dost not dye because thou art sick thou diest because thou art living Death kills thee without the help of Sickness And in some Sickness has deferr'd Death who have liv'd longer by reason that they thought themselves always dying To which may be added that as in Wounds so in Diseases some are medicinal and wholsom The Cholick is oft no less long-liv'd than you We see men with whom it has continu'd from their Infancy even to their extreme old Age and if they had not broke company it would have afflicted them longer still you ofter kill it than it kills you And though it present you the image of approaching Death were it not a good Office to a man of such an Age to put him in mind of his end And which is worse thou hast no longer any thing that should make thee desire to be cur'd Common Necessity will however presently call thee away Do but consider how artificially and gently she puts thee out of taste with Life and weans thee from the World not forcing and compelling thee with a tyrannical Subjection like so many other Infirmities which you see old men afflicted withall that hold them in continual Torment and keep them in perpetual and unintermitted Pains and Dolors but by Advertisements and Instructions at several intervals intermixing long pauses of repose as it were to give thee leave to meditate and ruminate upon thy lesson at they own ease and leisure to give thee means to judge aright and to assume the Resolution of a man of Courage she presents to thee the intire state of thy Condition both in good and evil and one while a very chearfull and another an insupportable Life in one and the same day If thou imbracest not Death at least thou shak'st hands with â—t once a Month by which thou hast more cause to hope that it will one day surprise thee without warning And that being so oft conducted to the water side and thinking thy self to be still upon the accustom'd terms thou and thy Confidence will at one time or another be unexpectedly wasted over A man cannot reasonably complain of Diseases that fairly divide the time with Health I am oblig'd to Fortune for having so oft assaulted me with the same sort of weapons she forms and fashions me by usance hardens and habituates me so that I can know within a little for how much I shall be quit For want of natural memory I make one of Paper and as any new symptom happens in my Disease I set it down from whence it falls out that being now almost past all sorts of Examples if any astonishment threaten me tumbling over these little loose notes as the Sybills Leaves I never fail of finding matter of Consolation from some favourable Prognostick in my past Experience Custom also makes me hope better for the time to come For the Conduct of this Evacuation having so long continued 't is to be believ'd that Nature will not alter her course and that no other worse accident will happen than what I already feel And besides the condition of this Disease is not unsuitable to my prompt and sudden Complexion When it assaults me gently I am afraid for 't is then for a great while but it has naturally brisk and vigorous Excesses It claws me to purpose for a day or two My Reins hold out an Age without Alteration and I have almost now liv'd another since they chang'd their state Evils have their Periods as well as Goods peradventure the Infirmity draws towards an end Age weakens the heat of my Stomach the Digestion of which being less perfect it sends this crude matter to my Reins and why at a certain revolution may not the heat of my Reins be also abated so that they can no more petrifie my flegm and Nature find out some other way of purgation Years have evidently help'd me to drain certain Rhumes and why not these excrements which furnish matter for Gravel But is there any thing sweet in comparison of this sudden change when from an excessive pain I come by the voiding of a Stone to recover as from a flash of Lightning the beautiful light of health so free and full as it happens in our sudden and most sharp Cholicks Is there any thing in the pain suffer'd that a man can counterpoize to the pleasure of so sudden an amendment Oh! how much does Health seem so much the more pleasant to me after so near and contiguous sickness as that I can distinguish them in the presence of one another in their greatest bravery wherewith they dress themselves in emulation as if to make head against and to dispute it with one another What the Stoicks say that Vices are profitably introduc'd to give value to and to set off virtue we can with better reason and less temerity of censure say of Nature that she has given us pain for the honour and service of pleasure and indolence When Socrates after his Fetters were knock'd off felt the pleasure of that itching which the weight of them had caus'd in his Legs he rejoyc'd to consider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure how they are link'd together by a necessary connexion so that by turn they follow and mutually beget one another and cry'd out to Aesop that he ought out of this consideration to have taken a Body proper for a fine Fable The worst that I see in other diseases is that they are not so grievous in their effect as they are in their issue A man is a whole year in recovering and all the while full of weakness and fear There is so much hazzard and so many steps to arrive at safety that there is no end on 't Before they have unmuffled you of a Handkerchief and then of a Callot before they allow you to walk abroad and take the Air to drink Wine lye with
but generally I give way and accommodate my self as much as any one to necessity Sleeping has taken up a great part of my Life and I yet continue at the Age I now am to sleep eight or nine hours together I wean my self to my advantage from this propension to sloth and am evidently the better for so doing I find the change a little hard indeed but in three days 't is over and see but few that live with less Sleep when need requires and that more constantly exercise themselves nor to whom long Journeys are less troublesome My Body is capable of a firm but not of a violent or sudden Agitation I evade of late all violent exercises and such as make me sweat wherein my Limbs grow weary before they are hot I can stand a whole day together and am never weary of walking But from my Youth I never lov'd to Ride upon Pavements On foot I go up to the Breech in dirt and little Fellows as I am are subject in the Streets to be Elbow'd and Justled for want of Presence and Stature and I have ever lov'd to repose my self whether sitting or lying with my Heels as high or higher than my Seat There is no profession is more pleasant than the military a profession both noble in its execution for Valour is the strongest proudest and most generous of all Vertues and noble in its cause There is no Utility either more Universal or more Just than the protection of the Peace and grandeur of a mans Country The company of so many Noble Young and Active men delights you the ordinary sight of so many Tragick Spectacles the liberty of this Conversation without Art with a Masculine and unceremonious way of living pleases you the variety of a Thousand several Actions the encouraging Harmony of Martial Musick that ravishes and inflames both your Ears and Souls the Honour of this exercise nay even the sufferings and difficulties of War which Plato so little esteems that he makes Women and Children share in it in his Republick are delightful to you You put your selves voluntarily upon particular Exploits and hazards according as you judge of their lustre and importance and see when even life it self is excusably employed Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis And we conceive it brave to die in Arms. To fear common dangers that concern so great a multitude of men not to dare to do what so many sorts of Souls and a whole people do is for a heart that is low and mean beyond all measure Company encourages so much as Children If others excell you in Knowledge in Gracefulness in Strength or Fortune you have third causes to blame for that but to give place to them in stability of mind you can blame no one for that but your self Death is more Abject more Languishing and Painful in Bed than in Battel and Fevers and Catharrs as Painful and Mortal as a Musquet-shott And whoever has fortified himself valiantly to bear the accidents of common life would not need to raise his courage to be a Souldier Vivere mi Lucilli militare est To live my Lucillus is to make War I do not remember that I ever had the Itch and yet scratching is one of natures sweetest gratifications and nearest at hand but the smart follows too near I use it most in my Ears which are often apt to Itch. I came into the World with all my Senses intire even to perfection My Stomach is commodiously good as also is my Head and my Breath and for the most part uphold themselves so in the height of Fevers I have past the age to which some Nations not without reason have prescrib'd so just a term of Life that they would not suffer men to exceed it and yet I have some intermissions though short and inconstant so clean and sound as are little inferiour to the Health and Indolency of my Youth I do not speak of Vigour and Spriteliness 't is not reason that it should follow me beyond its limits Non hoc amplius est liminis aut aquae Coelestis patiens latus My sides no longer can sustain The hardships of the Wind and Rain My Face and Eyes presently discover me All my alterations begin there and appear worse than they really are My Friends oft pity me before I feel the cause in my self My Looking-glass does not fright me for even in my Youth it has befaln me more than once to have a scurvy complexion and of ill Prognostick without any great consequence insomuch that the Physicians not finding any cause within answerable to that outward alteration attributed it to the mind and some secret passion that tormented me within but they were deceiv'd If my Body would govern it self as well according to my Rule as my Mind does we should move a little more at our ease My mind was then not only free from Trouble but moreover full of Joy and Satisfaction as it commonly is half by Complexion and half by its own Design Nec vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis I never yet could find That e're my Body suffer'd by my mind I am of the opinion that this temperature of my Soul has oft rais'd my Body from its lapses It is oft deprest and if the other be not brisk and gay 't is at least quiet and at rest I had a Quartan Ague four or five months that had made me look miserably ill my mind was always if not calm yet pleasant if the pain be without me the weakness and langour do not much afflict me I see several corporal faintings that beget a horrour in me but to name which yet I should less fear than a thousand passions and agitations of mind that I see in use I resolve no more to run 't is enough that I crawl along and no more complain of the natural decadency that I feel in my self Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus than I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that of an Oak I have no reason to complain of my imagination for I have had few thoughts in my Life which have so much as broke my sleep if not those of desire which have awak'd without afflicting me I dream but seldom and then of Chimera's and fantastick things commonly produc'd from pleasant thoughts and rather ridiculous than sad and believe it to be true that dreams are the true Interpreters of our inclinations but there is art requir'd to sort and understand them Res quae in vita usurpant homines cogitant curant vident Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque ea sicut in fomno accidunt minus nimirum est 'T is no wonder if what men practice think care for see and do when waking should also run in their Heads and disturb them when they are asleep Plato moreover says that 't is the office of Prudence to draw instructions of Divination of future things from
Customs Mart. lib. 3. Epig. 68. Mart. lib. 1. Epig. 74. The Embraces of the Cynicks impudent and in open Sight The purest way of Speaking capable of various Interpretations The Philosophers Stone approved Homer the general Leader of all sorts of People Lucret. l. 5. Ibid. l. 4. Doubt whether man have all his Senses Ibid. Ibid. Lucret. lib. 5. Id. lib. 4. Ibid. Ibid. Mr. Creech Ibid. Mr. Creech The Voice the flower of Beauty Ovid. de Remedio Amo. l. 1. Ovid. Met. lib. 3. Mr. Sandys Ovid. Met. lib. 10. Cicero de Divin lib. 1. Aeneid l. Lucret. l. 4. Mr. Creech Ibid. Mr. Creech The Life of a Man compared to a Dream Ibid. Ibid. Mr. Creech Jaundies Hyposphragma Ibid. Ibid. Mr. Creech Id. lib. 3. Mr. Creech Id. l. 4. Mr. Creech Idem lib. 5. Time a moving thing without permanency No very resolute assurance at the article of death Aeneid l. 3. Lucret. l. 1. Lucan l. 1· The Suns Mourning for the Death of Caesar. Virgil. Georg. l. 1. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 2· c. 8. Lucan l. 2. Id. l. 4. Cice. Thus. lib. 1. The constant and resolute Death of Socrates The death of Pomponius Atticus by Fasting Horat. in Arte Poet. Death bravely confronted by Cato Plin. l. 2. c. 7. Senec. Ep. 98. Ovid. Am. lib. 2. El. 19. Sen. de Ben. lib. 7. cap. 9. Mart. lib. 4. Epig. 38. Hor. Epod. 11. Lucret. l. 4. Hor. l. 1. sat 2. Mr. Alex. Brome Ovid. Amo. l. 2. El. 19. Terence Ovid. Amo. Propert. Virg. Eg. 3. Propert. l. 2 â—leg 12. Ovid. Amo. lib. 2. El. 19. Rutilius in Itinerario Senec. Epist. 68. St. Luke chap. 2. Plutarch Juven Sat. 7. Cicero very ambitious of Glory Hor. l. 4. Ode 9. Cicero de off l. 3. Salust Cicero de off l. 1. Corin. 2. chap. 1. ver 12. Orlando Canto 11. By Sir Tho Hawkins Cicero Honour what is it Elian. Varro Cic. de Fin. Ovid Epist. penult Perseus Sat. 1. Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 16. R. F. Perseus Sat. 1. Ibidem Juven sat 13. Aeneid l. 7. The Muses sacrific'd unto by the Lacedaemonians and why Aeneid l. 5. Seneca Cicero de Nat. Deor. Lucan lib. 1. Cicero de fin lib. 2. Ovid. Amo. l. 3. El. 4. Hor. lib. 2. Sat. 1. Sir Richard Fenshaw Tacitus Presumption divided into two parts Horace de Arte Poet. Ben Johnson Mart. l. 12. Epig. 64. Ovid de Ponto lib. 1. Eleg. 6. Montaigns Stile Hor. Ar. Poet. Lucret. l. 5. Mr. Creech Virgil. Aeneid l. 7. Psal. 4.8 The Authors Stature Mart. Lucret. l. 2. Mr. Creech Hor. lib. 2. Epist. 2. J. D. Id. lib. 2. Sat. 2. Alexander Brome Juven Sat. 3. Horace l. 2. Epist. 2. J. D. Hor. l. 1. Epist. 6. Alexander Brome Seneca Agamemnon Terence Prop. l. 1. Eleg. 2. Seneca Agara Horace l. 1. Epist. 1. Sir Richard Fenshaw Propeâ— Proverb Juven sat 13. Cicero Lying condemn'd Cicero de off l. 1. Memory very useful to the Judgment Memory quite lost Ter. Eunu. act 1. sc. 2. Cicero The Author's Memory His Apprehension His Sight Mart. l. 13. Epig. 2. The picture of Rene King of Sicily drawn by himself Terence Andr. Act. 1. Scen. 3. Act. 1. Cicero acad. lib. 4. Tibullus l. 4. Horace l. 2. Epist. 2. Juvenal Plaut Perseus sat 4. Cicero de offic lib. 1. Enemies honour'd by the Persians for their Virtue Praise of Stephen Boetius Horace l. 2. Sat. 3. Mr. Alexander Brome Lactant. Instit. l. 2. Hor. lib. 1. sat 4. Mr. Alexander Brome Perseus sat 5. D. August de Civit. l. 1. cap. 1. Mart. Catullus Marâ—t contre Sagoin Lying an Argument of the Contempt of God Plaut The Character of the Emperour Julian the Apostate His Chastity His Justice His Sobriety His Vigilancy His Military Experience The remakable Death of the Emperor Julian Liberty of Conscience Lucret. l. 4â— Seneca Ep. 74. Ovid. Trist. Catullus Ep. 14. Senec. Ep. 70. Tacit. Annal lib. 14. Livie Post-horses first set up by Cyrus Livius Pigeons taught to carry Letters Juvenal sat 6. Catullus Prudentius Ibid. Idem Manil. Statius Claud. Mart. Epig. 28. lib. 1. Mart. l. 12. Epig Hora. l. 1. Ep. 18. Juven Sat. 3. Claud. Ovid Trist. lib. 3. Eleg. 5. Duels common in the Kingdom of Narsingua Pollio's Libel against Plancus The Lye reveng'd with a box of the Ear. Eneid l. 11. Tasso Can. 12. Mr. Fairfax The Art of cuffing interdicted by Plato Cowards naturally cruel and bloody Claud. Juven sat 6. Hor. l. 2. Ode 18. Sir Thomas Hawkins Sen. Epist. Eneid l. 4. Gall. Eleg. What an old man's study ought to be Tib. lib. 4. Eleg. pen. Propertius l. 3. Eleg. 11. The Gymnosophists voluntarily burnt Causes of Events in the prescience of Almighty God Fortuitous and voluntary Causes Assasination of the Prince of Orange The Duke of Guise Cicero de Divin l. 2. Cicero de Divin l. 2. Juvenal Sat. 6. Juvenal Sat. 14. Ovid. de Art lib. 3. Censure of Cicero and Seneca Plutarch reproach'd for Anger by a Slave of his That Correction never ought to be given in Anger Aeneid l. 7. Seneca Epist. 57. Claudian Aeneid lib. 12. The Authors Anger in great and little Occasions Bodinus a good Author The Bowels of a Lacedemonian Boy torn out by a Fox-cub The Patience of the Lacedaemonian Children Thievery odious to the Spartans Thievery very much practic'd by the Egyptians Fortitude of a Spanish Peasant Death of Epicaris Or light-horse Women obstinate Agesilaus mulcted by the Ephori for insinuating himself into the Heart of the People Caesar very ambitious Caesar called Drunkard Venus accompanies Bacchus Caesar's Clemency towards his Enemies Ambition the only ruine of Caesars Actions Aeneid lib. 10. The Obedience of Caesar's Souldiers Lucan l. 5. Exhortations to Souldiers before a Battel of great importance Caesar's promptness in his Expeditions Lucan lib. 5. Virg. Aen. lib. 12. Lucan lib. 4. Horat. lib. 4. Ode 14. Sir Thomas Hawkins The great Resolution of Caesar in several occasions Monstrous Armies of no great Effect That great numbers of Men cause Confusion Souldiers Mercenary Fidelity of the Garrison of Salona Virg. Georg. lib. 2. The Story of the death of Arria the Wife of Cecinna Petus Mart. lib. 1. Epig. 14. Seneca's great Affection to his Wife Proper l. 2. Eleg. ult Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 2. Sir Rich. Fenshaw Ovid. Amo. lib. 3. Eleg. 8. Lucret. lib. 3. Manil. Astroâ— Aul. Gellius Lucan li. 1. Aeneid lib. 8. Aeneid lib. 12. Humanity of Epaminondas Seneca Epist. 101. The Stone the most painful of all Diseases Mart. l. 10. Epig. 47. Cicero Thusc l. 2. Ibid. Aeneid l. 6. The Author's Father afflicted with the Stone Physick unknown to many Nations Juvenal Sat. 3. Aeneid lib. 7. Cicero de Divin l. 2. A Moor bath'd and purg'd to clear his Complexion Auson Epig. Mart. Epig. Wine prescrib'd for the sick Spartans The sick Persons of Babylon expos'd in the market place * Meaning that was troubled vvith the Stone Ter. Heaut Act. 4. Sc. 1. Treachery rejected by Tyberius Lucan
THere is no Subject so frivolous that does not merit a Place in this Rapsody According to the common Rule of Civility it would be a kind of an Affront to an Equal and much more to a Superiour to fail of being at home when he has given you notice he will come to visit you Nay Queen Margaret of Navarr further adds that it would be a Rudeness in a Gentleman to go out to meet any that is coming to see him let him be of what condition soever and that it is more respective and more civil to stay at home to receive him if only upon the account of missing of him by the way and that is enough to receive him at the door and to wait upon him to his Chamber For my part who as much as I can endeavour to reduce the Ceremonies of my House I very often forget both the one and the other of these vain Offices and peradventure some one may take Offence at it if he do I am sorry but I cannot find in my heart to help it it is much better to offend him once than my self every day for it would be a perpetual slavery and to what end do we avoid the servile attendance of Courts if we bring the same or a greater trouble home to our own private houses It is also a common Rule in all Assemblies that those of less quality are to be first upon the Place by reason that it is a State more due to the better Sort to make others wait and expect them Nevertheless at the Interview betwixt Pope Clement and King Francis at Marselles the King after he had in his own Person taken order in the necessary Preparations for his Reception and Entertainment withdrew out of the Town and gave the Pope two or three dayes respite for his Entry and wherein to repose and refresh himself before he came to him And in like manner at the Assignation of the Pope and the Emperour at Bolognia the Emperour gave the Pope leave to come thither first and came himself after for which the reason then given was this that at all the Interviews of such Princes the greater ought to be first at the appointed Place especially before the other in whose Territories the Interview is appointed to be intimating thereby a kind of deference to the other it appearing proper for the less to seek out and to apply themselves to the greater and not the greater to them Not every Country only but every City and so much as every Society have their particular Forms of Civility There was care enough taken in my Education and I have liv'd in good Company enough to know the Formalities of our own Nation and am able to give Lesson in it I love also to follow them but not to be so servilely tyed to their observation that my whole Life should be enslav'd to Ceremony of which there are some that provided a man omits them out of Discretion and not for want of Breeding it will be every whit as handsom I have seen some People rude by being over-civil and troublesome in their Courtesie though these Excesses excepted the knowledge of Courtesie and good Manners is a very necessary study It is like Grace and Beauty that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight and in the beginning of an Acquaintance and Familiarity and consequently that which first opens the door and intromits us to Better our selves by the Example of others if there be any thing in their Society worth taking notice of CHAP. XIV That Men are justly punish'd for being obstinate in the Defence of a Fort that is not in reason to be defended VAlour has its bounds as well as other Vertues which once transgress'd the next step is into the Territories of Vice so that by having too large a Proportion of this Heroick Vertue unless a man be very perfect in its limits which upon the Consines are very hard to discern he may very easily unawares run into Temerity Obstinacy and Folly From this consideration it is that we have deriv'd the Custom in times of War to punish even with Death those who are obstinate to defend a Place that is not tenable by the Rules of War In which case if there were not some Examples made men would be so confident upon the hopes of Impunity that not a Hen-roost but would resist and stop a Royal Army The Constable Monsieur de Montmorency having at the Siege of Pavie been order'd to pass the Tesine and to take up his Quarters in the Fauxbourg St. Antonie being hindred so to do by a Tower that was at the end of the Bridge which was so impudent as to endure a Battery hang'd every man he found within it for their labour And again since accompanying the Daulphin in his Expedition beyond the Alps and taking the Castle of Villane by Assault and all within it being put to the Sword the Governour and his Ensign only excepted he caus'd them both to be truss'd up for the same reason as also did Captain Martin du Bellay then Governour of Turin the Governour of St. Bony in the same Country all his People being cut in pieces at the taking of the Place But forasmuch as the Strength or Weakness of a Fortress is always measur'd by the Estimate and Counterpoise of the Forces that attack it for a Man might reasonably enough despise two Culverines that would be a Mad-man to abide a Battery of thirty pieces of Cannon where also the Greatness of the Prince who is Master of the Field his Reputation and the Respect that is due unto him is always put into the Ballance 't is dangerous to affront such an Enemy and besides by compelling him to force you you possess him with so great an Opinion of himself and his Power that thinking it unreasonable any Place should dare to shut their Gates against his victorious Army he puts all to the Sword where he meets with any Opposition whilst his Fortune continues as is very plain in the fierce and arrogant Forms of summoning Towns and denouncing War savouring so much of Barbarian Pride and Insolence in use amongst the Oriental Princes and which their Successors to this day do yet retain and practice And even in that remote Part of the World where the Portuguese subdued the Indians they found some States where it was an universal and inviolable Law amongst them that every Enemy overcome by the King in Person or by his representative Lieutenant was out of Composition both of Ransome and Mercy So that above all things a Man should take heed of falling into the hands of a Judge who is an Enemy and victorious CHAP. XV. Of the Punishment of Cowardize I Once heard of a Prince and a great Captain having a Narration given him as he sat at Table of the Proceeding against Monsieur de Vervius who was sentenc'd to Death for having surrendred Bullen to the English openly
is not a thing that is and it were a great folly and an apparent falsity to say that that is which is not yet in being or that has already ceas'd to be And as to these words present instant and now by which it seems that we principally support and found the intelligence of Time Reason discovering does presently destroy it for it immediately divides and splits it into the future and past being of necessity to consider it divided in two The same happens to Nature that is measur'd as to Time that measures it for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other but all things are either born bearing or dying By which means it were a sinful saying to say of God who is He who only is that He was or that He shall be for those are Terms of declension transportation and vicissitude of what cannot continue nor remain in Being Wherefore we are to conclude that God only is not according to any measure of Time but according to an immutable and immoveable Eternity not measur'd by Time nor subject to any Declension before whom nothing was and after whom nothing shall be either more new or more recent but a real Being that with one sole Now fills the for ever and that there is nothing that truly is but He alone without being able to say He has been or shall be without beginning and without end To this Religious conclusion of a Pagan I shall only add this testimony of one of the same condition for the close of this long and tedious Discourse which would furnish me with endless matter What a vile and abject thing says he is man if he do not raise himself above Humanity 'T is a good word and a profitable desire but withall absurd For to make the handle bigger than the Hand and the Cubit longer than the Arm and to hope to stride further than our Legs can reach is both impossible and monstrous or that Man should rise above himself and Humanity for he cannot see but with his Eyes nor seize but with his Power He shall be exalted if God will lend him his extraordinary hand he shall exalt himself by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means and by suffering himself to be rais'd and elevated by means purely Celestial It belongs to our Christian Faith and not to the Stoical Vertue to pretend to that Divine and miraculous Metamorphosis CHAP. XIII Of judging of the Death of another WHen we judge of another's assurance in Death which without doubt is the most remarkable action of humane Life we are to take notice of one thing which is that men very hardly believe themselves to be arriv'd to that period Few men dye in an opinion that it is their latest hour and there is nothing wherein the flattery of Hope does more delude us It never ceases to whisper in our Ears Others have been much sicker without dying my condition is not so desperate as 't is thought and at the worst God has done other Miracles Which happens by reason that we set too much value upon our selves It seems as if the Universality of things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution and that it did commiserate our condition For as much as our deprav'd sight represents things to it self after the same manner and that we are of opinion they stand in as much need of us as we do of them like People at Sea to whom Mountains Fields Cities Heaven and Earth are toss'd at the same rate they are Provehimur portu terraeque urbesque recedunt Out of the Port with a brisk gale we speed And making way Cities and Lands recede Whoever saw old Age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present time laying the fault of his Misery and Discontent upon the World and the Manners of Men Jamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert Praeteritis laudat fortunas saepe parentis Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum Now the old Ploughman sighs and shakes his Head And present times comparing with those fled His predecessors happiness does praise And the great Piety of that old Race We will make all things to go along with us whence it follows that we consider our Death as a very great thing and that does not so easily pass nor without the solemn Consultation of the Stars Tot circa unum Caput tumultuantes Deos and so much the more think it as we more value our selves What shall so much Knowledge be lost with so much damage to the World without a particular concern of the Destinies Does so rare and exemplary a Soul cost no more the killing than one that is mean and of no use to the publick This Life that protects so many others upon which so many other Lives depend that employs so vast a number of men in his Service and that fills so many places shall it drop off like one that hangs but by its own simple Thread None of us layes it enough to Heart that we are but one Thence proceeded those Words of Caesar to his Pilot more tumid than the Sea that threatned him Italiam si coelo authore recusas Me pete sola tibi causa haec est justa timoris Victorem non nosce tuum perrumpe procellas Tutela secure mei If thou to sail to Italy decline Under the Gods Protection trust to mine The only just cause that thou hast to fear Is that thou dost not know thy Passenger But I being aboard slight Neptunes braves And fearless cut thorough the swelling Waves And these credit jam digna pericula Caesar Fatis esse suis tantusque evertere dixit Me superis labor est parva quem puppe sedentem Tam magno petiere mari These Dangers worthy of his Destiny Caesar did now believe and then did cry What is it for the Gods a task so great To overthrow me that to do the feat In a poor little Bark they must be fain Here to surprize me on the swelling Main And that idle Fancy of the Publick that the Sun carried in his Face the Mourning for his Death a whole Year Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam Cum Caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit And pittying Rome Great Caesar being dead In mourning Clouds Sol veil'd his shining Head and a thousand of the like wherewith the World suffers it self to be so easily impos'd upon believing that our interests alter the Heavens and that they are concern'd at our ordinary Actions Non tanta Coelo societas nobiscum est ut nostro fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor There is no such Alliance betwixt us and Heaven that the Brightness of the Stars should be made Mortal by our Death Now to judge of the Constancy and Resolution in a Man that does not yet believe himself to be certainly in Danger though he
really is is no Reason and 't is not enough that he dies in this posture unless he did purposely put himself into it for this effect It most commonly falls out in most men that they set a good Face upon the Matter and speak with great Indifferency to acquire Reputation which they hope afterward living to enjoy Of all that I have seen dye Fortune has dispos'd their Countenances and no design of theirs and even of those who in ancient times have made away themselves there is much to be consider'd whether it were a sudden or a lingring Death That cruel Roman Emperour would say of his Prisoners That he would make them feel Death and if any one kill'd himself in Prison That Fellow has made an escape from me he would say he would spin out Death and make it felt by Torments Vidimus toto quamvis in Corpore caeso Nil animae lethale datum moremque nefandae Durum saevitiae percunctis parcere morti And in tormented Bodies we have seen Amongst those Wounds none that have mortal been Inhumane Method of dire Cruelty That means to kill yet will not let men dye In plain truth it is no such great Matter for a Man in Health and in a temperate state of Mind to resolve to kill himself it is very easie to give ill signâ— before one comes to the push insomuch that Heliogabalus the most effeminate Man in the World amongst his most sensual Pleasures could forecast to make himself dye delicately when he should be forc'd thereto And that his Death might not give the lye to the rest of his Life had purposely built a sumptuous Tower the Front and Base whereof was cover'd and lay'd with Planks enrich'd with Gold and precious Stones thence to precipitate himself and also caus'd Cords twisted with Gold and Crimson Silk to be made wherewith to strangle himself and a Sword with the blade of Gold to be hammer'd out to fall upon and kept Poyson in Vessels of Emerald and Topaze wherewith to poyson himself according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying Impiger fortis virtute coacta By a forc'd Valour resolute and brave Yet for so much as concerns this Person the effeminacy of his Preparations makes it more likely that he would have thought better on 't had he been put to the test But in those who with greater Resolution have determin'd to dispatch themselves we must examine whether it were with one blow which took away the leisure of feeling the Effect for it is to be question'd whether perceiving Life by little and little to steal away the sentiment of the Bodâ—â— mixing it self with that of the Soul and the means of repenting being offer'd whether I say Constancy and Obstinacy in so dangerous a will is to be found In the Civil Wars of Caesar Lucius Domittus being taken in Prussia and thereupon poysoning himself afterward repented It has hapned in our time that a certain Person being resolv'd to dye and not having gone deep enough at the first thrust the sensibility of the Flesh opposing his Arm gave himself three or four Wounds more but could never prevail upon himself to thrust home Whilst Plantius Sylvanus was upon his Tryal Virgulantia his Grand Mother sent him a Poignard with which not being able to kill himself he made his Servants to cut his Veins Albucilla in Tiberius his Time having to kill himself struck with too much tenderness gave his Adversaries Oportunity to imprison and put him to Death their own way and that great Leader Demosthenes after his Rout in Sicily did the same and C. Fimbria having struck himself too weakly intreated his Servant to dispatch him and to kill him out On the contrary Ostorius who could not make use of his own Arm disdain'd to employ that of his Servant to any other use but only to hold the Poignard straight and firm and running his Breast full drive against it thrust himself through 'T is in truth a morsel that is to be swallow'd without chewing unless a man be throughly resolv'd and yet Adrian the Emperour made his Physiâ—ian mark and incircle in his Pap the mortal place wherein he was to stab to him he had given order to kill him For this reason it was that Caesar being ask'd what Death he thought to be the most desir'd made Answer The least premeditated and the shortest If Caesar dar'd to say it it is no Cowardize in me to believe it A short Death says Pliny is the sovereign good hap of humane Life They do not much care to discover it No one can say that he is resolv'd for Death who fears to trifle with it and that cannot undergo it with his Eyes open They that we see in exemplary Punishments run to their Death hasten and press their Execution do it not out of Resolution but they will not give themselves leisure to consider it it does not trouble them to be dead but to dye Emori nolo sed me esse mortuum nihili aestimo I would not dye but care not to be dead 'T is a degree of Constancy to which I have experimented that I can arrive to do like those who plunge themselves into Dangers as into the Sea with their Eyes shut There is nothing in my Opinion more illustrious in the Life of Socrates than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the Sentence of his Death to have digested it all that time with a most assured hope without care and without alteration and with Words and Actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirr'd or discompos'd by the weight of such a Thought That Pomponius Atticus to whom Cicero writes so oft being sick caus'd Agrippa his Son-in-law and two or three more of his Friends to be call'd to him and told them That having found all means practis'd upon him for his Recovery to be in vain and that all he did to prolong his Life did also prolong and augment his Pain he was resolved to put an end both to the one and the other desiring them to approve of his Deliberation or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to disswade him Now having chosen to destroy himself by Abstinence his Disease was accidentally so cur'd and the Remedy that he had made use of wherewith to kill himself restor'd him to his perfect Health His Physicians and Friends rejoycing at so happy an Event and coming to congratulate him found themselves very much deceiv'd it being impossible for them to make him alter his Purpose he telling them that he must one day dye and that being now so far on his way he would save himself the labour of beginning again another time This Man having discover'd Death at leisure was not only not discourag'd at the approach of it but provokes it for being satisfied that he had engag'd in the Combat he consider'd it as a piece of Bravery and that he