beleaguered places The shaft whereof being roul'd round with Flax Wax Rozin Oyl and other combustible matter took Fire in its flight and lighting upon the Body of a Man or his Targuet took away all the use of Arms and Limbs And yet coming to close fight I should think they should also endammage the Assailant and that the Camp being as it were planted with these Flaming Truncheons should produce a common innonvenience to the whole crowd Magnum stridens contorta Phalarica venit Fulminis acta modo The Comet like Phalarica does fly With a huge noise like lightning through the Sky They had moreover other devices which custom made them perfect in which will seem incredible to us who have not seen them by which they supply'd the effects of our powder and shot They darted their Piles with so great violence as oft-times transfixt two Targuets and two Armed Men at once and pinn'd them together Neither was the effect of their slings less certain of execution or of shorter carriage Saxis globosis funda mare apertum incessantes coronas modici circuli magno ex intervallo loci assueti trajicere non capita modo hostium vulnerabant sed quem locum destinassent Calling round stones from the shoar for their slings and with them practising at a great distance to throw through a Circle of very small circumference they would not only wound an Enemy in the head but hit any other part at pleasure Their pieces of Battery had not only the execution but the thunder of our Canon also ad ictus menium cum terribili sonitu editos pavor trepidatio caepit At the Battery of the Walls which is performed with a dreadful noise the defendants began to fear and tremble within The Gaules our Kinsmen in Asia abominated these treacherous missite Arms it being their use to fight with greater Bravery Hand to Hand Non tam patentibus plagis moventur ubi latior quam altior plaga est etiam gloriosius se pugnare putant iidem quum aculeus sagitte aut glandis abditae introrsus tenui vulnere in speciem urit tum in rabium et pudorem tam parvae perimentis pestis versi prosternunt corpora humi They are not so much concern'd at large wounds when a wound is wider than deep they think they have fought with greater glory But when they find themselves tormented within under the aspect of a slight wound with the point of a Dart or some concealed glandulous Body then transported with fury and shame to perish by so small and contemptible an Officer of death they fall to ground an expression of something very like a harquebuse shot The ten thousand Greeks in their long and famous retreat met with a Nation who very much gall'd them with great and strong Bows carrying Arrows so long that taking them up one might return them back like a Dart and with them pierce a Buckler and an Armed Man through and through The Engines of Dionysius his invention at Syracusa to shoot vast massy Darts and Stones of a prodigious greatness with so great impetuosity and at so great a distance came very near to our modern inventions But in this discourse of Horses and Horsemanship we are not to forget the pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol a Doctor of Divinity upon his Mule whom Menstrelet reports always to have rid aside through the streets of Paris like a Woman He says also elsewhere that the Gascons had terrible Horses that would wheel and make the Pirouette in their full speed which the French Picards Dutch and Brabanters lookt upon as a Miracle having never seen the like before which are his very words Caesar speaking of the Swedes in the charges they make on Horseback says he they often throw themselves off to fight on foot having taught their Horses not to stir in the mean time from the place to which they presently run again upon occasion and according to their custome nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use Saddles or Pads and they dispise such as make use of those conveniences insomuch that being but a very few in number they fear not to attack a great many That which I have formerly wondred at to see a Horse made to perform all his Airs with a Switch only and the Reins upon his Neck was common with the Massilians who rid their Horses without Saddle or Bridle Et gens quae nudo residens Massilia dorso Ora levi flectit fraenorum nescia virga Et numidae infraeni cingunt Massilians who on the bare Backs do ride And with a Switch not knowing Bridles guide The menag'd Steed and fierce Numidians too That use no Rein begirt us round Equi sine fraenis deformis ipse 〈◊〉 rigida cervice extento capite currentium The Career of a Horse without a Bridle must needs be ungrateful his Neck being extended stiff and his Nose thrust out King Alphonso he who first instituted the Order des Chevaliers de la Bande or de l' Escharpe in Spain amongst other rules of the Order gave them this that they should never ride Mule or Mulet upon penalty of a Mark of Silver which I had lately out of Guevara's Letters which whoever gave them the title of Golden Epistles had another kind of opinion of them than I have and perhaps saw more in them than I do The Courtier says that till his time it was a disgrace to a Gentleman to ride one of these Creatures But the Abyssins on the contrary as they are nearer advanc'd to the person of Prester John do affect to be mounted upon large Mules for the greatest dignity and grandeur Xenophon tells us that the Assyrians were fain to keep their Horses fetter'd in the Stable they were so fierce and vicious and that it requir'd so much time to loose and harness them that to avoid any disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of surprize they never sate down in their Camp till it was first well fortified with Ditches and Rampires His Cyrus who was so great a Master in alâ—â—â—â—ner of Horse Service kept his Horses to their ordinary and never suffer'd them to have any thing to eat till first they had earn'd it by the sweat of some kind of exercise The Scythians when in the Field and in scarcity of provisions us'd to let their Horses blood which they drank and sustain'd themselves by that diet Venit epoto Sarmata pastus equo The Scythian also comes without remorse Having before quafft up his bleeding Horse Those of Crotta being besieg'd by Metellus were in so great necessity for drink that they were fain to quench their thirst with their Horses Urine and to shew how much better cheap the Turkish Armies support themselves than our European Forces 't is said that besides that the Souldiers drink nothing but Water and eat nothing but Rice and Salt Flesh pulveriz'd of which
years of age It is full both of Reason and Piety too to take Example by the Humanity of Jesus Christ himself who ended his Life at three and thirty years The greatest man that ever was no more than a man Alexander died also at the same Age. How many several ways has Death to surprize us Quid quisque vitet nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas Man fain would shun but 't is not in his Power T' evade the dangers of each threatning hour To omit Fevers and Pleurisies who would ever have imagin'd that a Duke of Brittany should be press'd to death in a Crowd as that Duke was at the entry of Pope Clement into Lyons Have we not seen one of our Kings kill'd at a Tilting and did not one of his Ancestors dye by the justle of a Hog Aeschylus being threatned with the fall of a house was to much purpose so circumspect to avoid that danger when he was knock'd o' th' head by a Tortoise-shell falling out of an Eagles Talons in the Fields Another was choak'd with a Grape-stone an Emperour kill'd with the scratch of a Comb in combing his Head Aemilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold and Anfidius with a justle against the door as he entred the Council Chamber And betwixt the very Thighs of Women Cornelius Gallus the Praetor Tigillinus Captain of the Watch at Rome Ludovico Son of Guido de Gonzaga Marquis of Mantua and of worse example Spensippus a Platonick Philosopher and one of our Popes The poor Judge Bebius whilst he repriev'd a Criminal for eight dayes only was himself condemn'd to death and his own day of Life was expir'd Whilst Caius Julius the Physician was anointing the Eyes of a Patient Death clos'd his own and if I may bring in an Example of my own Blood A Brother of mine Captain St. Martin a young man of three and twenty years old who had already given sufficient testimony of his Valour playing a match at Tennis receiv'd a blow of a Ball a little above his right Ear which though it was without any manner of sign of Wound or depression of the Skull and though he took no great notice of it nor so much as sate down to repose himself he nevertheless died within five or six hours after of an Apoplexy occasion'd by that blow Which so frequent and common Examples passing every day before our Eyes how is it possible a man should disingage himself from the thought of Death or avoid fancying that it has us every moment by the Collar What matter is it you will say which way it comes to pass provided a man does not terrifie himself with the expectation For my part I am of this mind that if a man could by any means avoid it though by creeping under a Calves skin I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift all I aim at is to pass my time pleasantly and without any great Reproach and the Recreations that most contribute to it I take hold of as to the rest as little glorious and exemplary as you would desire praetulerim delirus inersque videri Dum mea delectant mala me vel denique fallant Quà m sapere ringi A Fool or Coward let me censur'd be Whilst either Vice does please or cozen me Rather than be thought wise and feel the smart Of a perpetual aking anxious Heart But 't is folly to think of doing any thing that way They go they come they gallop and dance and not a word of Death All this is very fine but withall when it comes either to themselves their Wives their Children or Friends surprizing them at unawares and unprepar'd then what torment what out-cries what madness and despair Did you ever see any thing so subdu'd so chang'd and so confounded A man must therefore make more early tryal of it and this bruitish negligence could it possibly lodge in the Brain of any man of Sense which I think utterly impossible sells us its merchandize too dear Were it an Enemy that could be avoided I would then advise to borrow Arms even of Cowardize it self to that effect but seeing it is not and that it will catch you as well flying and playing the Poltron as standing to 't like a man of Honour Nempe fugacem persequitur virum Nec parcit umbellis juventae Poplitibus timidoque tergo No speed of foot prevents Death of his prize He cuts the Hamstrings of the man that flies Nor spares the tender Stripling 's back does start T' out-run the distance of his mortal Dart. And seeing that no temper of Arms is of proof to secure us Ille licet ferro cautus se condat aere Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput Shell thee with Steel or Brass advis'd by dread Death from the Cask will pull the cautious Head let us learn bravely to stand our ground and fight him And to begin to deprive him of the greatest Advantage he has over us let us take a way quite contrary to the common course Let us disarm him of his Novelty and Strangeness let us converse and be familiar with him and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as Death Let us upon occasions represent him in all his most dreadful shapes to our imagination at the stumbling of a Horse at the falling of a Tile at the lest prick with a Pin let us presently consider and say to our selves Well and what if it had been Death it self and thereupon let us encourage and fortifie our selves Let us evermore amidst our jollity and Feasting set the remembrance of our frail condition before our Eyes never suffering our selves to be so far transported with our Delight but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon and considering how many several wayes this Jollity of ours tends to Death and with how many dangers it threatens it The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner who in the height of their Feasting and Mirth caus'd a dried Skeleton of a Man to be brought into the Room to serve for a Memento to their Guests Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora. Think every day soon as the day is past Of thy Lives date that thou hast liv'd the last The next day's joyful Light thine Eyes shall see As unexpected will more welcome be Where Death waits for us is uncertain let us every where look for him The Premeditation of Death is the Premeditation of Liberty who has learnt to dye has forgot to serve There is nothing of Evil in Life for him who rightly comprehends that Death is no Evil to know how to dye delivers us from all Subjection and Constraint Paulus Aemylius answer'd him whom the miserable King of Macedon his Prisoner sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his Triumph Let him make that Request to himself In truth in all things if
would steal aside to make Water as religiously as a Virgin and was as shy to discover either to his Physician or any other whatever those Parts that we are accustomed to conceal and I my self who have so impudent a way of Talking am nevertheless naturally so modest this way that unless at the Importunity of Necessity or Pleasure I very rarely and unwillingly communicate to the Sight of any either those Parts or Actions that Custom orders us to conceal wherein I also suffer more Constraint than I conceive is very well becoming a Man especially of my Profession but he nourish'd this modest Humour to such a degree of Superstition as to give express Orders in his last Will that they should put him on Drawers so soon as he should be dead to which methinks he would have done well to have added that he should have been hood-wink'd too that put them on The Charge that Cyrus left with his Children that neither they nor any other should either see or touch his Body after the Soul was departed from it I attribute to some superstitious Devotion of his both his Historian and Himself amongst other great Qualities having strew'd the whole Course of their Lives with a singular Respect to Religion I was by no means pleas'd with a Story was told me by a Man of very great Quality of a Relation of mine and one who had given a very good Account of himself both in Peace and War that coming to dye in a very old Age of an excessive Pain of the Stone he spent the last Hours of his Life in an extraordinary Solitude about ordering the Ceremony of his Funeral pressing all the Men of Condition who came to see him to engage their Word to attend him to his Grave importuning this very Prince who came to visit him at his last Gasp with a most earnest Supplication that he would order his Family to be assisting there and withall representing before him several Reasons and Examples to prove that it was a Respect due to a Man of his Condition and seem'd to dye content having obtain'd this Promise and appointed the Method and Order of this Funeral Parade I have seldom heard of so long-liv'd a Vanity Another though contrary Solitude of which also I do not want domestick Example seems to be somewhat a Kin to this That a Man shall cudgel his Brains at the last Moments of his Life to contrive his Obsequies to so particular and unusual a Parcimony as to conclude it in the sordid expence of one single Servant with a Candle and Lanthorn And yet I see this Humour commended and the Appointment of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus who forbad his Heirs to bestow upon his Hearse even the common Ceremonies in use upon such Occasions Is it yet Temperance and Frugality to avoid the Expence and Pleasure of which the use and knowledge is imperceptible to us See here an easie and cheap Reformation If Instruction were at all necessary in this case I should be of Opinion that in this as in all other Actions of Life the Ceremony and Expence should be regulated by the Ability of the Person deceas'd and the Philosopher Lycon prudently order'd his Executors to dispose of his Body where they should think most fit and as to his Funerals to order them neither too superfluous nor too mean For my part I should wholly refer the ordering of this Ceremony to Custom and shall when the time comes accordingly leave it to their Discretion to whose Lot it shall fall to do me that last Office Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis non negligendus in nostris The Place of our Sepulture is wholly to be contemn'd by us but not to be neglected by our Friends and it was a holy Saying of a Saint Curatio funeris conditio Sepulturae pompa Exequiarum magis sunt vivorum solatia quà m subsidia mortuorum The Care of Funerals the Place of Sepulture and the Pomps of Exequies are rather Consolations to the Living than any Benefit to the Dead Which made Socrates answer Criton who at the Hour of his Death ask'd him how he would be buried How you will said he If I could concern my self further than the Present about this Affair I should be most tempted as the greatest Satisfaction of this kind to imitate those who in their Life-time entertain themselves with the Ceremony of their own Obsequies before-hand and are pleas'd with viewing their own Monument and beholding their own dead Countenance in Marble Happy are they who can gratifie their Senses by Insensibility and live by their Death I am ready to conceive an implacable Hatred against all Democracy and Popular Government though I cannot but think it the most natural and equitable of all others so oft as I call to mind the inhumane Injustice of the People of Athens who without Remission or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for themselves put to death their brave Captains newly return'd triumphant from a Naval Victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusian Isles the most bloody and obstinate Engagement that ever the Greeks fought at Sea for no other Reason but that they rather followed their Blow and pursued the Advantages prescribed them by the Rule of War than that they would stay to gather up and bury their Dead an Execution that is yet rendred more odious by the Behaviour of Diomedon who being one of the condemn'd and a Man of most eminent both politick and military Vertue after having heard their Sentence advancing to speak no Audience till then having been allowed instead of laying before them his own Innocency or the Impiety of so cruel an Arrest only express'd a Sollitude for his Judges Preservation beseeching the Gods to convert this Sentence to their own Good and praying that for neglecting to pay those Vows which he and his Companions had done which he also acquainted them with in Acknowledgment of so glorious a Success they might not pull down the Indignation of the Gods upon them and so without more Words went couragiously to his Death But Fortune a few Years after punishing them in their kind made them see the Error of their Cruelty for Chabrias Captain-General of their Naval Forces having got the better of Pollis Admiral of Sparta about the Isle of Naxos totally lost the Fruits of his Success and Content with his Victory of very great Importance to their Affairs not to incur the danger of this Example and lose a few Bodies of his dead Friends that were floating in the Sea gave opportunity to a world of living Enemies to sail away in Safety who afterwards made them pay dear for this unseasonable Superstition Quaeris quae jaceas post obitum loco Quae non nata jacent Dost ask where thou shalt lye when dead With those that never Being had This other restores the sense of Repose to a Body without a Soul Neque sepulcrum quo
were spread abroad in favour of the Emperour Charles the Fifth and to our Disadvantage especially in Italy where these foolish Prophecies were so far believ'd that great Sums of Money were laid and others ventur'd out upon return of greater when they came to pass so certain they made themselves of our Ruine that having bewail'd to those of his Acquaintance who were most intimate with him the Mischiefs that he saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the Friends he had in that Court he unhandsomely revolted and turn'd to the other side but to his own Misfortune nevertheless what Constellation soever govern'd at that time But he carried himself in this Affair like a Man agitated with divers Passions for having both Towns and Forces in his hands the Enemy's Army under Antonio de Leva close by him and we not at all suspecting his Design it had been in his Power to have done more than he did for we lost no Men by this Infidelity of his nor any Town but Fossan only and that after a long Siege and a brave Defence Prudens futuri temporis exitum Caliginosa nocte premit Deus Ridetque si mortalis ultra Fas trepidat Th' eternal Mover has in Shades of Night Future Events conceal'd from humane sight And laughs when he does see the timerous Ass Tremble at what shall never come to pass ille potens sui Laetusque deget cui licet in diem Dixisse vixi cras vel atra Nube Polum pater occupato Vel sole puro He free and merrily may live can say As the day passes I have liv'd to day And for to morrow little does take Care Let the World's Ruler make it foul or fair Laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est Oderit curare A mind that 's cheerful in its present State To think of any thing beyond will hate And those who take this Sentence in a contrary Sense interpret it amiss Ista sic reciprocantur ut si Divinatio sit Dii sint si Dii sint sit Divinatio These things have that mutual Relation to one another that if there be such a thing as Divination there must be Deities and if Deities Divination much more wisely Pacuvius Nam istis qui linguam avium intelligunt Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo Magis audiendum quà m auscultandum censeo Who the Birds Language understand and who More from Brutes Livers than their own do know Are rather to be heard than hearkned to The so celebrated Art of Divination amongst the Tuscans took its Beginning thus A Labourer striking deep with his Culter into the Earth saw the Demy-God Tages to ascend with an Infantine Aspect but endued with a mature and Senile Wisdom Upon the Rumour of which all the People ran to see the sight by whom his Words and Science containing the Principles and means to attain to this Art were recorded and kept for many Ages A Birth sutable to its Progress I for my part should sooner regulate my Affairs by the chance of a Die than by such idle and vain Dreams And indeed in all Republicks a good share of the Government has ever been referr'd to chance Plato in the civil Regiment that he models according to his own Fancy leaves the Decision of several things of very great Importance wholly to it and will amongst other things that such Marriages as he reputes legitimate and good be appointed by Lot and attributing so great Vertue and adding so great a Priviledge to this accidental choice as to ordain the Children begot in such Wedlock to be brought up in the Country and those begot in any other to be thrust out as spurious and base yet so that if any of those Exiles notwithstanding should peradventure in growing up give any early hopes of future Vertue they were in a Capacity of being recall'd as those also who had been retain'd were of being exil'd in case they gave little Expectation of themselves in their greener Years I see some who are mightily given to Study pore and comment upon their Almanacks and produce them for Authority when any thing has fall'n out pat though it is hardly possible but that these well-Wishers to the Mathematicks in saying so much must sometimes stumble upon some Truths amongst an infinite Number of Lies Quis est enim qui totum diem jaculans non aliquando contineet For who shoots all day at Buts that does not sometimes hit the White I think never the better of them for some accidental Hits There would be more certainty in it if there were a Rule and a Truth of always lying Besides no Body records their Flim-flams and false Prognosticks forasmuch as they are infinite and common but if they chop upon one Truth that carries a mighty Report as being rare incredible and prodigious So Diogenes surnam'd the Atheist answer'd him in Samothrace who shewing him in the Temple the several Offerings and Stories in Painting of those who had escap'd Shipwrack said to him Look you said he you who think the Gods have no care of humane things what do you say by so many Persons preserv'd from Death by their especial Favour Why I say answer'd he that their Pictures are not here who were cast away which were by much the greater number Cicero observes that of all the Philosophers who have acknowledg'd a Deity Xenophanes only has endeavour'd to eradicate all manner of Divination which makes it the less a Wonder if we have sometimes seen some of our Princes to their own cost relye too much upon these Fopperies I wish I had given any thing that I had with my own Eyes seen those two great Rarities the Book of Joachim the Calabrian Abbot which foretold all the future Popes their Names and Figures and that of the Emperour Leo which prophecied of all the Emperours and Patriarchs of Greece This I have been an Eye-witness of that in publick Confusions men astonish'd at their Fortune have abandoned their own Reason superstitiously to seek out in the Stars the ancient Causes and Menaces of their present mishaps and in my time have been so strangely successful in it as to make men believe that this Study being proper to fix and settle piercing and volatile Wits those who have been any thing vers'd in this knack of unfolding and untying Riddles are capable in any sort of Writing to find out what they desire But above all that which gives them the greatest Room to play in is the obscure ambiguous and fantastick Gibberish of their prophetick Canting where their Authors deliver nothing of clear Sense but shroud all in Riddle to the end that Posterity may interpret and apply it according to their own Fancy Socrates his Daemon or Familiar might perhaps be no other but a certain Impulsion of the Will which obtruded it self upon him without the advice or consent of his Judgment and in a Soul so
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
envious of the Grandeurs here below Vsque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam Obterit pulcros Fasces saevasque secures Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur By which it does appear a Power unseen Rome's awful Fasces and her Axes keen Spurns under foot and plainly does despise Of humane Power the vain Formalities And it should seem also that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprize the last Hour of our Lives to shew the Power she has in a Moment to overthrow what she was so many Years in building making us cry out with Laberius Nimirum hac die una plus vixi mihi quà m vivendum fuit I have liv'd longer by this one day than I ought to have done And in this Sense this good Advice of Solon may reasonably be taken but he being a Philosopher with which sort of Men the Favours and Disgraces of Fortune stand for nothing either to the making a Man happy or unhappy and with whom Grandeurs and Powers Accidents of Quality are upon the Matter indifferent I am apt to think that he had some further Aim and that his meaning was that the very Felicity of Life it self which depends upon the Tranquillity and Contentment of a well-descended Spirit and the Resolution and Assurance of a well-order'd Soul ought never to be attributed to any Man till he has first been seen to play the last and doubtless the hardest act of his Part because there may be Disguise and Dissimulation in all the rest where these fine Philosophical Discourses are only put on and where Accidents do not touch us to the Quick they give us leisure to maintain the same sober Gravity but in this last Scene of Death there is no more counterfeiting we must speak plain and must discover what there is of pure and clean in the bottom Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo Ejiciuntur eripitur persona manet res Then then at last Truth issues from the Heart The Vizor's gone we act our own true part Wherefore at this last all the other Actions of our Life ought to be tryed and sifted 'T is the Master-day 't is the day that is judge of all the rest 'T is the Day says one of the Ancients that ought to be judge of all my foregoing Years To Death do I refer the Essay of the Fruit of all my Studies We shall then see whether my Discourses came only from my Mouth or from my Heart I have seen many by their Death give a good or an ill Repute to their whole Life Scipio the Father-in-law of Pompey the great in dying well wip'd away the ill Opinion that till then every one had conceiv'd of him Epaminondas being ask'd which of the three he had in greatest esteem Chabrias Iphicrates or himself You must first see us die said he before that Question can be resolv'd and in truth he would infinitely wrong that great Man who would weigh him without the Honour and Grandeur of his End God Almighty has order'd all things as it has best pleas'd him But I have in my time seen three of the most execrable Persons that ever I knew in all manner of abominable living and the most infamous to boot who all dyed a very regular Death and in all Circumstances compos'd even to Perfection There are brave and fortunate Deaths I have seen Death cut the Thread of the Progress of a prodigious Advancement and in the height and Flower of its encrease of a certain Person with so glorious an end that in my Opinion his Ambitious and generous Designs had nothing in them so high and great as their Interruption and he arriv'd without compleating his course at the Place to which his Ambition pretended with greater Glory than he could himself either hope or desire and anticipated by his Fall the Name and Power to which he aspir'd by perfecting his Career In the Judgment I make of another man's Life I always observe how he carried himself at his Death and the principal Concern I have for my own is that I may dye handsomly that is patiently and without noise CHAP. XIX That to study Philosophy is to learn to dye CIcero says That to study Philosophy is nothing but to prepare a Man's self to dye The reason of which is because Study and Contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us and deprive us of our Souls and employ it separately from the Body which is a kind of Learning to dye and a resemblance of Death or else because all the Wisdom and reasoning in the World does in the end conclude in this Point to teach us not to fear to dye And to say the Truth either our Reason does grosly abuse us or it ought to have no other Aim but our Contentment only nor to endeavour any thing but in Sum to make us live well and as the Holy Scripture says at our Ease All the Opinions of the World agree in this That Pleasure is our end though we make use of divers means to attain unto it they would otherwise be rejected at the first motion for who would give Ear to him that should propose Affliction and Misery for his end The Controversies and Disputes of the Philosophical Sects upon this Point are merely verbal Transcurramus solertissimas nugas Let us skip over those learned and subtle Fooleries and Trifles there is more in them of Opposition and Obstinacy than is consistent with so sacred a Profession but what kind of Person soever Man takes upon him to personate he over-mixes his own part with it and let the Philosophers all say what they will the main thing at which we all aim even in Virtue it self is Pleasure It pleases me to rattle in their Ears this Word which they so nauseate to hear and if it signifie some supream Pleasure and excessive Delight it is more due to the Assistance of Vertue than to any other Assistance whatever This Delight for being more gay more sinewy more robust and more manly is only to be more seriously voluptuous and we ought to give it the Name of Pleasure as that which is more benign gentle and natural and not that of Vigour from which we have deriv'd it the other more mean and sensual part of Pleasure if it could deserve this fair Name it ought to be upon the Account of Concurrence and not of Priviledge I find it less exempt from Traverses and Inconveniences than Vertue it self and besides that the Enjoyment is more momentary fluid and frail it has its Watchings Fasts and Labours even to Sweat and Blood and moreover has particular to it self so many several sorts of sharp and wounding Passions and so stupid a Saciety attending it as are equal to the severest Penance And we mistake to think that Difficulties should serve it for a Spur and a seasoning to its Sweetness as in Nature one Contrary is quickned by another and to say when we
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
their Tables Dishes Cups and all And as the Egyptians after their Feasts were wont to present the Company with a great Image of Death by one that cry'd out to them Drink and be merry for such shalt thou be when thou art dead so it is my Custom to have Death not only in my Imagination but continually in my Mouth neither is there any thing of which I am so inquisitive and delight to inform my self as the manner of mens Deaths their Words Looks and Gestures nor any places in History I am so intent upon and it is manifest enough by my crowding in Examples of this kind that I have a particular fancy for that Subject If I were a Writer of Books I would compile a Register with a Comment of the various Deaths of men and it could not but be useful for who should teach men to dye would at the same time teach them to live Dicearchus made one to which he gave that Title but it was design'd for another and less profitable end Peradventure some one may object and say that the pain and terror of dying indeed does so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination that the best Fencer will be quite out of his Play when it comes to the Push but let them say what they will to premeditate is doubtless a very great Advantage and besides is it nothing to come so far at least without any visible Disturbance or Alteration But moreover Nature her self does assist and encourage us If the Death be sudden and violent we have not leisure to fear if otherwise I find that as I engage further in my Disease I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain of Life I find I have much more ado to digest this Resolution of dying when I am well in Health than when sick languishing of a Fever and by how much I have less to do with the Commodities of Life by reason I even begin to lose the use and Pleasure of them by so much I look upon Death with less Terror and Amazement which makes me hope that the further I remove from the first and the nearer I approach to the latter I shall sooner strike a Bargain and with less Unwillingness exchange the one for the other And as I have experimented in other Occurrences that as Caesar says things often appear greater to us at distance than near at hand I have found that being well I have had Diseases in much greater Horror than when really afflicted with them The Vigour wherein I now am and the Jollity and Delight wherein I now live make the contrary Estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition that by imagination I magnifie and make those inconveniences twice greater than they are and apprehend them to be much more troublesome than I find them really to be when they lie the most heavy upon me and I hope to find Death the same Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and Declinations our Constitutions daily suffer how Nature deprives us of all sight and sense of our bodily decay What remains to an old man of the vigour of his Youth and better days Heu senibus vitae portio quanta manet Alas to men of youthful Heat bereft How small a Portion of Life is left Caesar to an old weather-beaten Souldier of his Guards who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself taking notice of his wither'd Body and decrepid motion pleasantly answer'd Thou fanciest then that thou art yet alive Should a man fall into the Aches and impotencies of Age from a spritely and vigorous Youth on the sudden I do not think Humanity capable of enduring such a change but Nature leading us by the hand an easie and as it were an insensible pace step by step conducts us to that miserable condition and by that means makes it familiar to us so that we perceive not nor are sensible of the stroak then when our Youth dies in us though it be really a harder Death than the final Dissolution of a languishing Body which is only the Death of old Age forasmuch as the Fall is not so great from an uneasie Being to none at all as it is from a spritely and florid Being to one that is unweildy and painful The Body when bow'd beyond its natural spring of Strength has less Force either to rise with or support a Burthen and it is with the Soul the same and therefore it is that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the Power of this Adversary for as it is impossible she should ever be at rest or at Peace within her self whilst she stands in fear of it so if she once can assure her self she may boast which is a thing as it were above Humane Condition that it is impossible that Disquiet Anxiety or Fear or any other Disturbance should inhabit or have any Place in her Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida neque Auster Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus A Soul well settled is not to be shook With an incensed Tyrant's threatning Look Nor can loud Auster once that Heart dismay The ruffling Prince of stormy Adria Nor yet th' advanced hand of mighty Jove Though charg'd with Thunder such a Temper move She is then become Sovereign of all her Lusts and Passions Mistress of Necessity Shame Poverty and all the other Injuries of Fortune Let us therefore as many of us as can get this Advantage which is the true and sovereign Liberty here on Earth and that fortifies us wherewithall to defie Violence and Injustice and to contemn Prisons and Chains in Manicis Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo Ipse Deus simul atque volam me solvet opinor Hoc sentit moriar mors ultima linea verum est With rugged Chains I 'll load thy Hands and Feet And to a surly Keeper thee commit Why let him shew his worst of Cruelty God will I think for asking set me free Ay but he thinks I 'll dye that Comfort brings For Death 's the utmost Line of Humane things Our very Religion it self has no surer humane Foundation than the Contempt of Death Not only the Argument of Reason invites us to it for why should we fear to lose a thing which being lost can never be miss'd or lamented But also seeing we are threatned by so many sorts of Death is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all than once to undergo one of them And what matter is it when it shall happen since it is once inevitable To him that told Socrates the thirty Tyrants have sentenc'd thee to Death and Nature them said he What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble and afflict our selves about taking the only Step that is to deliver us from all Misery and Trouble As our Birth brought us the Birth of all things so in our Death is the Death of
need to take no other care but only to counterplot their Fancy The indocile and rude liberty of this scurvy Member is sufficiently remarkable by its importunate unruly and unseasonable tumidity and impatience at such times as we have nothing for it to do and by its more unseasonable stupidity and disobedience when we stand most in need of his vigour so imperiously contesting the authority of the Will and with so much obstinacy denying all sollicitation both of hand and fancy And yet though his Rebellion is so universally complain'd of and that proofs are not wanting to condemn him if he had nevertheless feed me to plead his Cause I should peradventure bring the rest of his fellow-members into suspition of complotting this mischief against him out of pure envy at the importance and ravishing pleasure particular to his Employment so as to have by Confederacy arm'd the whole World against him by malevolently charging him alone with their common offence For let any one consider whether there is any one Part of our Bodies that does not often refuse to perform its Office at the Precept of the Will and that does not often exercise its Function in defiance of her Command They have every one of them proper Passions of their own that rouze and awake stupifie and benum them without our Leave or Consent How often do the involuntary motions of the Countenance discover our inward Thoughts and betray our most private Secrets to the Knowledge of the Standers by The same Cause that animates this Member does also without our Knowledge animate the Lungs Pulse and Heart the sight of a pleasing Object imperceptibly diffusing a Flame thorough all our Parts with a febrifick motion Is there nothing but these Veins and Muscles that swell and flag without the Consent not only of the Will but even of our Knowledge also We do not command our Hairs to stand an end nor our Skin to shiver either with Fear or Desire The Hands often convey themselves to Parts to which we do not direct them The Tongue will be interdict and the Voice sometimes suffocated when we know not how to help it When we have nothing to eat and would willingly forbid it the Appetite of Eating and Drinking does not for all that forbear to stir up the Parts that are subjected to it no more nor less than the other Appetite we were speaking of and in like manner does as unseasonably leave us The Vessels that serve to discharge the Belly have their proper Dilatations and Compressions without and beyond our Intelligence as well as those which are destin'd to purge the Reins And that which to justifie the Prerogative of the Will St. Augustine urges of having seen a Man who could command his Backside to discharge as often together as he pleas'd and that Vives does yet fortifie with another Example in his time of one that could Fart in Tune does nothing suppose any more pure Obedience of that Part for is any thing commonly more tumultuary or indiscreet To which let me add that I my self knew one so rude and ungovern'd as for forty Years together made his Master-Vent with one continued and unintermitted Hurricane and 't is like will do till he expire that way and vanish in his own Smoak And I could heartily wish that I only knew by Reading how oft a Man's Belly by the Denial of one single Puff brings him to the very door of an exceeding painful Death and that the Emperour who gave Liberty to let fly in all Places had at the same time given us Power to do it But for our Will in whose Behalf we prefer this Accusation with how much greater Similitude of Truth may we reproach even her her self with Mutiny and Sedition for her Irregularity and Disobedience Does she always will what we would have her to do Does she not often will what we forbid her to will and that to our manifest Prejudice Does she suffer her self any more than any of the other to be govern'd and directed by the Results of our Reason To conclude I should move in the Behalf of the Gentleman my Clyent it might be consider'd that in this Fact his Cause being inseparably conjoyn'd with an Accessary yet he is only call'd in Question and that by Arguments and Accusations that cannot be charg'd nor reflect upon the other whose Business indeed is sometimes inoportunely to invite but never to refuse and to allure after a tacite and clandestine manner and therefore is the Malice and Injustice of his Accusers most manifestly apparent But be it how it will protesting against the Proceedings of the Advocates and Judges Nature will in the mean time proceed after her own way who had done but well if she had endow'd this Member with some particular Priviledge The Author of the sole immortal Work of Mortals A divine Work according to Socrates and of Love Desire of Immortality and himself an immortal Daemon Some one perhaps by such an Effect of Imagination may have had the good luck to leave that behind him here in France which his Companion who has come after and behav'd himself better has carried back with him into Spain And that you may see why Men in such cases require a mind prepar'd for the thing they are to do Why do the Physicians tamper with and prepossess before-hand their Patients credulity with many false promises of Cure if not to the end that the effect of imagination may supply the imposture and defect of their Aposeme They know very well that a great Master of their Trade has given it under his hand that he has known some with whom the very sight of a potion would work which Examples of Fancy and Conceit come now into my head by the remembrance of a story was told me by a domestick Apothecary of my Father's a blunt Swisse a Nation not much addicted to vanity and lying of a Merchant he had long known at Thoulouse who being a valetudinary much afflicted with Fits of the Stone had often occasion to take Clysters of which he caus'd several sorts to be prescrib'd him by the Physicians according to the accidents of his Disease one of which being one time brought him and none of the usual forms as feeling if it were not too hot and the like being omitted he was laid down on his Belly the Syringe put up and all Ceremonies perform'd injection excepted after which the Apothecary being gone the Patient accommodated as if he had really receiv'd a Clyster he found the same operation and effect that those do who have taken one indeed and if at any time the Physician did not find the Operation sufficient he would usually give him two or three more after the same manner And the Fellow moreover swore to me that to save charges for he pay'd as if he had really taken them this sick mans Wife having sometimes made tryal of warm Water only the effect discover'd the Cheat
Assiduity and Perseverance besides that there is nothing so contrary to my Stile as a continued and extended Narrative I so often interrupt and cut my self short in my Writing only for want of Breath I have neither Fancy nor Expression worth any thing and am ignorant beyond a Child of the Phrases and even the very Words proper to express the most common things and for that Reason it is that I have undertaken to say only what I can say and have accommodated my Subject to my Force Should I take one to be my Guide peradventure I should not be able to keep Pace with him and in the Precipitancy of my Career might deliver Things which upon better Thoughts in my own Judgment and according to Reason would be criminal and punishable in the highest degree Plutarch would tell us of what he has deliver'd to the Light that it is the Work of others that his Examples are all and every where exactly true that they are useful to Posterity and are presented with a Lustre that will light us the way to Vertue which was his Design but it is not of so dangerous consequence as in a Medicinal Drugg whether an old Story be so or so CHAP. XXI That the Profit of one Man is the Inconvenience of another DEmades the Athenian condemn'd one of his City whose Trade it was to sell the Necessaries for Funeral Ceremonies upon Pretence that he demanded unreasonable Profit and that that Profit could not accrue to him but by the Death of a great Number of People A Judgment that appears to be ill grounded for as much as no Profit whatever can possibly be made but at the Expence of another and that by the same Rule he should condemn all manner of Gain of what kind soever The Merchant only thrives and grows rich by the Pride Wantonness and Debauchery of Youth the Husbandman by the Price and Scarcity of Grain the Architect by the Ruine of Buildings Lawyers and Officers of Justice by the Suits and Contentions of Men nay even the Honour and Office of Divines are deriv'd from our Death and Vices A Physician takes no Pleasure in the Health even of his Friends says the ancient Comical Greek nor a Souldier in the Peace of his Country and so of the rest And which is yet worse let every one but dive into his own Bosome and he will find his private Wishes spring and his secret Hopes grow up at anothers Expence Upon which Consideration it comes into my Head that Nature does not in this swerve from her general Polity for Physicians hold that the Birth Nourishment and Encrease of every thing is the Corruption and Dissolution of another Nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit Continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante For what from its own Confines charg'd doth pass Is straight the Death of what before it was CHAP. XXII Of Custom and that we should not easily change a Law receiv'd HE seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of Custom who first invented the Story of a Country-woman who having accustom'd her self to play with and carry a young Calf in her Arms and daily continuing to do so as it grew up obtain'd this by Custom that when grown to be a great Ox she was still able to bear it For in truth Custom is a violent and treacherous School-mistris She by little and little slily and unperceiv'd slips in the foot of her Authority but having by this gentle and humble beginning with the benefit of Time fix'd and establish'd it she then unmasks a furious and tyrannick Countenance against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our Eyes We see it at every turn forcing and violating the Rules of Nature Vsus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister Custom is the great Master of all things I believe Plato's care in his Republick and the Physicians who so often submit the Reasons of their Art to the authority of Habit as also the story of that King who by Custom brought his Stomach to that pass as to live by Poison and the Maid that Albertus reports to have liv'd upon Spiders and in that new World of the Indies there were found great Nations and in very differing Climates who were of the same Diet made provision of them and fed them for their Tables as also they did Grashoppers Mice Bats and Lizards and in a time of scarcity of such Rarities a Toad was sold for six Crowns all which they cook and dish up with several Sawces There were also others found to whom our Diet and the Flesh we eat were venemous and mortal Consuetudinis magna vis est Pernoctant venatores in nive in montibus uri se patiuntur Pugiles Caestibus contusi ne ingemiscunt quidem The power of Custom is very great Hunts-men will one while lye out all night in the Snow and another suffer themselves to be parch'd in the Mountains and Fencers inur'd to beating when bang'd almost to pulp with Clubs and Whirde-Bats disdain so much as to groan These are strange Examples but yet they will not appear so strange if we consider what we have ordinary experience of how much Custom stupifies our Senses neither need we go to be satisfied of what is reported of the Cataracts of Nile and of what Philosophers believe of the Musick of the Spheres that the Bodies of those Circles being solid and smooth and coming to touch and rub upon one another cannot fail of creating a wonderful Harmony the changes and cadencies of which cause the Revolutions and Dances of the Stars but that the hearing Sense of all Creatures here below being universally like that of the Egyptians deaf'd and stupified with the continual Noise cannot how great soever perceive it Smiths Millers Pewterers Forge-men and Armorers could never be able to live in the perpetual Noise of their own Trades did it strike their Ears with the same Violence that it does ours My perfum'd Doublet gratifies my own Smelling at first as well as that of others but after I have worn it three or four Days together I no more perceive it but it is yet more strange that Custom notwithstanding the long Intermissions and Intervals should yet have the Power to unite and establish the Effect of its Impressions upon our Senses as is manifest in such as live near unto Steeples and the frequent noise of the Bells I my self lye at home in a Tower where every Morning and Evening a very great Bell rings out the Ave Maria the Noise of which shakes my very Tower and at first seem'd insupportable to me but having now a good while kept that Lodging I am so us'd to 't that I hear it without any manner of Offence and often without awaking at it Plato reprehending a Boy for playing at some childish Game Thou reprov'st me says the Boy for a very little thing
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
not to spare their Powder which was accordingly done and serv'd to so good use as to please and gratifie the suspected Troops and thenceforward to beget a mutual and wholsome Confidence and Intelligence amongst them I look upon Julius Caesar's way of winning Men to him as the best and most plausible that can possibly be put in practice First he try'd by Clemency to make himself belov'd even by his very Enemies contenting himself in detected Conspiracies only publickly to declare that he was pre-acquainted with them which being done he took a noble Resolution to expect without Sollicitude or Fear whatever might be the Event wholly resigning up himself to the Protection of the Gods and Fortune for questionless in this very Estate he was at the time when he was kill'd A Stranger having publickly said that he could teach Dionysius the Tyrant of Syracusa an infallible way to find out and discover all the Conspiracies his Subjects should contrive against him if he would give him a good Sum of Money for his Pains Dionysius hearing of it caus'd the Man to be brought to him that he might learn an Art so necessary to his Preservation and having ask'd him by what Art he might make such Discoveries the Fellow made Answer That all the Art he knew was That he should give him a Talent and afterwards boast that he had obtain'd a singular Secret from him Dionysius lik'd the Invention and accordingly caus'd six hundred Crowns to be counted out to him It was not likely he should give so great a Sum to a Person unknown but upon the account of some extraordinary Discovery the belief of which serv'd to keep his Enemies in awe Princes however do very wisely to publish the Informations they receive of all the Practices against their Lives to possess men with an opinion they have so good Intelligence and so many Spies abroad that nothing can be plotted against them but they have present notice of it The Duke of Athens did a great many ridiculous things to establish his new Tyranny over Florence but this especially was most remarkable that having receiv'd the first intimation of the Conspiracies the People were hatching against him by Mattheo di Moroso one of the Conspirators he presently put him to death to suppress that Rumour that it might not be thought any of the City dislik'd his Government I remember I have formerly read a Story of some Roman of great Quality who flying the Tyranny of the Triumvirat had a thousand times by the subtilty of as many Inventions escap'd from falling into the hands of those that pursu'd him It hap'ned one day that a Troop of Horse which was sent out to take him pass'd close by a Brake where he was squat and miss'd very narrowly of spying him but he considering upon the instant the Pains and Difficulties wherein he had so long continued to evade the strict and continual Searches were every day made for him the little Pleasure he could hope for in such a kind of Life and how much better it was for him to dye once for all than to be perpetually at this pass he start from his Seat himself call'd them back shew'd them his Form and voluntarily deliver'd himself up to their Cruelty by that means to free both himself and them from further Trouble To invite a man's Enemies to come and cut his Throat was a Resolution that appears a little extravagant and odd and yet I think he did better to take that course than to live in a Quotidian Ague and for which there was no Cure But seeing all the Remedies a Man can apply to such a Disease are full of Unquietness and uncertain 't is better with a manly Courage to prepare ones self for the worst that can happen and to extract some Consolation from this That we are not certain the thing we fear will ever come to pass CHAP. XXIV Of Pedantry I Was often when a Boy wonderfully concern'd to see in the Italian Farces a Pedant alwayes brought in for the Fool of the Play and that the Title of Magister was in no greater Reverence amongst us for being deliver'd up to their Tuition what could I do less than be jealous of their Honour and Reputation I sought I confess to excuse them by the natural incompatibility betwixt the Vulgar sort and men of a finer thread both in Judgment and Knowledge for as much as they go a quite contrary way to one another But in this the thing I most stumbled at was that the bravest men were those who most despis'd them witness our famous Poet du Bellay Mais je hay par sur tout un scavoir pedantesque But of all sorts of Learning that Of the Pedant I most do hate And they us'd to do so in former times for Plutarch says that Graecian and Scholar were names of reproach and contempt amongst the Romans But since with the better experience of Age I find they had very great reason so to do and that magis magnos Clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes The greatest Clerks are not the wisest men But whence it should come to pass that a Mind enrich'd with the knowledge of so many things should not become more quick and spritely and that a gross and vulgar understanding should yet inhabit there without correcting and improving it self where all the Discourses and Judgments of the greatest Wits the World ever had are collected and stor'd up I am yet to seek To admit so many strange Conceptions so great and so high Fancies it is necessary as a young Lady and one of the greatest Princesses of the Kingdom said to me once that a man 's own be crowded and squeez'd together into a less compass to make room for the other I should be apt to conclude that as Plants are suffocated and drown'd with too much nourishment and Lamps with too much Oyl so is the active part of the Understanding with too much study and Matter which being embarass'd and confounded with the diversity of things is depriv'd of the Force and Power to disengage it self and that by the pressure of this weight it is bow'd subjected and rendred of no use But it is quite otherwise for a Soul stretches and dilates it self proportionably as it fills And in the Examples 〈◊〉 elder times we see quite contrary men vâ—â—ry proper for publick Business great Captains and great States-men very Learned withall whereas the Philosophers a sort of men retir'd from all Publick Affairs have been sometimes also despis'd and render'd contemptible by the Comical liberty of their own Times their Opinions and singularity of Manners making them appear to men of another method of living ridiculous and absurd Would you make them Judges of a Controversie of common Right or of the Actions of Men they are ready to take it upon them and straight begin to examine if he has Life if he has Motion if Man be any other than an Oxe What
no effect of Vertue to have stronger Arms and Legs 't is a Dead and Corporeal quality to be Active 't is an Exploit of Fortune to make our Enemy stumble or to dazle him with the light of the Sun 't is a trick of Science and Art and that may happen in a mean base Fellow to be a good Fencer The Estimate and Valour of a Man consist in the Heart and in the Will there his true Honour Lives Valour is Stability not of Legs and Arms but of the Courage and the Soul it does not lie in the Valour of our Horse or our Arms but in our own He that falls obstinate in his Courage Si succiderit de genu pugnat If his Legs fail him Fight upon his Knees He who for any danger of apparent Death abates nothing of his assurance who Dying does yet dart at his Enemy a fierce and disdainful Look is overcome not by us but by Fortune he is Kill'd not Conquer'd the most Valiant and sometimes the most Unfortunate There are also Defeats Triumphant to Emulation of Victories Neither durst those Four Sister-Victories the fairest the Sun ever beheld of Salamis Platea Mycall and Sycyly ever oppose all their united Glories to the single Glory of the Discomfiture of King Leonidas and his Army at the Pass of Thermopyle Whoever ran with a more glorious Desire and greater Ambition to the winning than the Captain Ischolas to the certain loss of a Battel Who could have found out a more subtle Invention to secure his safety than he did to assure his Ruine He was set to defend a certain Pass of Peloponesus against the Arcadians which considering the nature of the place and the inequality of Forces finding it utterly impossible for him to do and concluding that all who were presented to the Enemy must certainly be left upon the place and on the other side reputing it unworthy of his own Vertue and Magnanimity and of the Lacedemonian name to fail in any part of his Duty he chose a mean betwixt these two Extreams after this manner The Youngest and most Active of his Men he would preserve for the Service and Defence of their Country and therefore sent them back and with the rest whose loss would be of less consideration he resolv'd to make good the Pass and with the death of them to make the Enemy Buy their Entry as dear as possibly he could as it also fell out for being presently Environ'd on all sides by the Arcadians after having made a great Slaughter of the Enemy he and his were all cut in pieces Is there any Trophy dedicated to the Conquerours which is not much more due to these who were overcome The part that true Conquering is to play lies in the Encounter not in the coming off and the Honour of Vertue consists in Fighting not in Subduing But to return to my Story these Prisoners are so far from discovering the least Weakness for all the Terrors can be represented to them that on the contrary during the two or three Months that they are kept they always appear with a chearful Countenance importune their Masters to make haste to bring them to the Test Defie Rail at them and Reproach them with Cowardize and the number of Battels they have lost against those of their Country I have a Song made by one of these Prisoners wherein he bids them come all and Dine upon him and welcome for they shall withal Eat their own Fathers and Grandfathers whose Flesh has serv'd to feed and nourish him These Muscles says he this Flesh and these Veins are your own Poor silly Souls as you are you little think that the substance of your Ancestors Limbs is here yet but mind as you Eat and you will find in it the Taste of your own Flesh In which Song there is to be observ'd an Invention that does nothing relish of the Barbarian Those that paint these People Dying after this manner represent the Prisoner spitting in the faces of his Executioners and making at them a wry Mouth And 't is most certain that to the very last gasp they never cease to Brave and Defie them both in Word and Gesture In plain truth these Men are very Savage in comparison of us and of necessity they must either be absolutely so or else we are Savager for there is a vast difference betwixt their Manners and ours The Men there have several Wives and so much the greater number by how much they have the greater Reputation and Valour and it is one very remarkable Vertue their Women have that the same Endeavour our Wives have to hinder and divert us from the Friendship and Familiarity of other Women those employ to promote their Husbands Desires and to procure them many Spouses for being above all things sollicitous of their Husbands Honour 't is their chiefest care to seek out and to bring in the most Companions they can forasmuch as it is a Testimony of their Husbands Vertue I know most of ours will cry out that 't is Monstrous whereas in truth it is not so but a truly Matrimonical Vertue though of the highest form In the Bible Sarah Leah and Rachel gave the most Beautiful of their Maids to their Husbands Livia preferred the Passion of Augustus to her own interest and the Wife of King Dejotarus of Stratonica did not only give up a fair young Maid that serv'd her to her Husbands Embraces but moreover carefully brought up the Children he had by her and assisted them in the Succession to their Fathers Crown And that it may not be suppos'd that all this is done by a simple and servile Observation to their common Practice or by any Authoritative Impression of their Ancient Custom without Judgment or Examination and for having a Soul so stupid that it cannot contrive what else to do I must here give you some touches of their sufficiency in point of Understanding besides what I repeated to you before which was one of their Songs of War I have another and a Love-Song that begins thus Stay Adder stay that by thy Pattern my Sister may draw the Fashion and work of a Noble Wreath that I may present to my Beloved by which means thy Beauty and the excellent Order of thy Scales shall for ever be preferr'd before all other Serpents Wherein the first Couplet Stay Adder c. makes the Burthen of the Song Now I have converst enough with Poetry to judg thus much that not only there is nothing of Barbarous in this Invention But moreover that it is perfectly Anacreontick to which their Language is soft of a pleasing Accent and something bordering upon the Greek Terminations Three of these People not foreseeing how dear their knowledg of the Corruptions of this part of the World would one Day cost their Happiness and Repose and that the effect of this Commerce would be their Ruine as I presuppose it is in a very fair way Miserable Men to suffer
misery of this Life to pretend to bliss in another the other by laying themselves low to avoid the Danger of falling are acts of an excessive Nature The Stoutest and most obstinate Natures render even their most obstruce retirements Glorious and Exemplary tuta parvula laudo Cum res dificiunt satis inter vilia fortis Verum ubi quid melius contigit et unctius Hos sapere solos aio bene vivere quorum idem Conspiciturmitidis fundata pecunia villis Where plenty fails A secure competency I like well And love the Man disaster cannot quellâ— But when good Fortune with a liberal hand Her gifts bestows those Men I understand Alone happy to live and to be Wise Whose Money does in neat built Villa's rise A great deal less would serve my turn well enough 'T is enough for me under Fortunes favour to prepare my self for her Disgrace and being at my ease to represent to my self as far as my imagination can Stretch the ill to come as we do at Justs and Tiltings where we counterfeit War in the greatest Calm of Peace I do not think Arcesilaus the Philosopher the less Temperate and Reform'd for knowing that he made use of Gold and Silver Vessels when the condition of his Fortune allow'd him so to do But have a better Opinion of him than if he had deni'd himself what he us'd with Liberality and Moderation I see the utmost Limits of Natural necessity and considering a Poor Man Begging at my Door oft-times more Jocund and more Healthy than I my self am I put my self into his place and attempt to dress my Mind after his Mode and running in like manner over other examples though I fancy Death Poverty Contempt and Sickness treading on my Heels I easily resolve not to be affrighted forasmuch as a less than I takes them with so much Patience and am not willing to believe that a less understanding can do more than a greater or that the effects of precept cannot arrive to as great a height as those of Custom And knowing of how uncertain duration these accidental conveniences are I never forget in the height of all my enjoyments to make it my cheifest Prayer to Almighty God that he will please to render me content with my self and the Condition wherein I am I see several Young Men very Gay and Frolick who nevertheless keep a Mass of Pills in their Trunck at home to take when the Rhume shall fall which they fear so much the less because they think they have Remedy at hand Every one should do the same and moreover if they find themselves subject to some more violent Disease should furnish themselves with such Medicines as may Numme and Stupifie the part The employment a Man should choose for a Sedentary Life ought neither to be a Laborious nor an unpleasing one otherwise 't is to no purpose at all to be retir'd and this depends upon every ones liking and humour mine has no manner of complacency for Husbandry and such as Love it ought to apply themselves to it with Moderation Conantur sibi res non se submittere rebus A Man should to himself his Business fit But should not to Affairs himself submit Husbandry is otherwise a very Servile Employment as Salust tells us though some parts of it are more excusable than the rest as the Care of Gardens which Zenophon attributes to Cyrus and a mean may be found out betwixt Sordid and Homely Affection so full of perpetual Solitude which is seen in Men who make it their entire Business and Study and that stupid and extream Negligence letting all things go at Random we see in others Democriti pecus edit agellos Cultaque dum peregre est animus sine corpore velox Democritus his Cattle spoils his Corn Whilst he from thence on Fancy's Wings is born But let us hear what Advice the Younger Pliny gives his Friend Cornelius Rufus upon the Subject of Solitude I advise thee in the plentiful Retirement wherein thou art to leave to thy Hinds and inferiour Servants the Care of thy Husbandry and to addict thy self to the Study of Letters to extract from thence something that may be entirely and absolutely thine own By which he means Reputation like Cicero who says that he would employ his Solitude and Retirement from Publick Affairs to acquire by his Writings an Immortal Life Vsque adeo ne Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter Is all thy Learning nothing unless thou That thou art Knowing make all others know It appears to be reason when a Man talks of Retiring from the World that he should look quite out of himself These do it but by halves They design well enough for themselves 't is true when they shall be no more in it but still they pretend to extract the fruits of that Design from the World when absented from it by a Ridiculous Contradiction The Imagination of those who seek Solitude upon the account of Devotion filling their Hopes with certainty of Divine Promises in the other Life is much more rationally founded They propose to themselves God an infinite Object in Goodness and Power The Soul has there wherewithal at full liberty to satiate her Desires Afflictions and Sufferings turn to their advantage being undergone for the acquisition of an eternal Health and everlasting Joys Death is to be wish'd and long'd for where it is the passage to so perfect a Condition And the Tartness of these severe Rules they impose upon themselves is immediately taken away by Custom and all their Carnal Appetites baffled and subdu'd by refusing to humour and feed them they being only supported by use and exercise This sole end therefore of another happy and immortal Life is that which really merits that we should abandon the Pleasures and Conveniences of this And who can really and constantly enflame his Soul with the Ardour of this Lively Faith and Hope does erect for himself in this Solitude a more Voluptuous and Delicious Life than any other sort of Living whatever Neither the end then nor the means of this Advice of Pliny pleases me for we often fall out of the Frying-pan into the Fire This Book Employment is as painful as any other and as great an Enemy to Health which ought to be the first thing in every Man's prospect neither ought a Man to be allur'd with the pleasure of it which is the same that destroys the Wary Avaricious Voluptuous and Ambitious Men. The Wise give us Caution enough to beware the Treachery of our Desires and to distinguish true and entire Pleasures from such as are mix'd and complicated with greater Pain For the greatest part of Pleasures say they Wheedle and Caress only to strangle us like those Thieves the Egyptians call'd Philiste and if the Head-Ach should come before Drunkenness we should have a care of Drinking too much but Pleasure to deceive us Marches before and conceals
her Train Books are pleasant but if by being over Studious we impair our Health and spoil our good Humour two of the best Pieces we have let us give it over for I for my part am one of those who think that no Fruit deriv'd from them can recompence so great a Loss As Men who feel themselves Weakned by a long Series of Indisposition give themselves up at last to the Mercy of Medicine and submit to certain Rules of Living which they are for the future never to Transgress so he who Retires weary of and disgusted with the common way of Living ought to Model this new One he enters into by the Rules of Reason and to Institute and Establish it by Premeditation and after the best Method he can contrive He ought to have taken leave of all sorts of Labour what advantage soever he may propose to himself by it and generally to have shaken off all those Passions which disturb the Tranquility of Body and Soul and then choose the Way that best suits with his own Humour Vnusquisque sua noverit ire via Every one best doth know In his own Way to go In Menagery Study Hunting and all other Exercises Men are to proceed to the utmost limits of Pleasure but must take heed of engaging further where Solitude and Trouble begin to mix We are to reserve so much Employment only as is necessary to keep us in Breath and to defend us from the Inconveniences that the other Extream of a Dull and Stupid Laziness brings along with it There are some Steril Knotty Sciences and chiefly Hammer'd out for the Crow'd let such be left to them who are Engag'd in the Publick Service I for my part care for no other Books but either such as are pleasant and easie to delight me or those that comfort and instruct me how to Regulate my Life and Death Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est Silently Meditating in the Groves What best a Wise and Honest Man behoves Wiser Men propose to themselves a Repose wholely Spiritual as having great force and vigour of Mind but for me who have a very ordinary Soul I find it very necessary to support my self with Bodily Conveniences and Age having of late depriv'd me of those Pleasures that were most acceptable to me I instruct and whet my Appetite to those that remain and are more suitable to this other season We ought to hold with all our force both of Hands and Teeth the use of the Pleasures of Life that our Years one after another snatch away from us Carpamus dulciâ— nostrum est Quod vivis cinis manes fabula fies Let us Enjoy Life's Sweets for shortly we Ashes Pale Ghost's and Fables all shall be Now as to the End that Pliny and Cicero propose to us of Glory 't is infinitely wide of my account for Ambition is of all other the most contrary Humour to Solitude and Glory and Repose are so inconsistant that they cannot possibly Inhabit in one and the same place and for so much as I understand those have only their Arms and Legs disingag'd from the Crowd their Mind and Intention remains engag'd behind more than ever Tun ' vetule auriculis alienis colligis escas Dost thou Old Dotard at these Years Gather fine Tales for others Ears They are only Retir'd to take a better Leap and by a stronger Motion to give a brisker Charge into the Crowd Will you see how they shoot short Let us put into the Counterpoise the Advice of two Philosophers of two very different Sects Writing the one to Idomeneus the other to Lucilius their Friends to Retire into Solitude from Worldly Honours and the Administration of Publick Affairs You have say they hitherto Liv'd Swimming and Floating come now and Die in the Harbour You have given the first part of your Life to the Light give what remains to the Shade It is impossible to give over Business if you do not also quit the Fruit and therefore disengage your selves from all the Concerns of Name and Glory 'T is to be fear'd the Lustre of your former Actions will give you but too much Light and follow you into your most private and most obscure Retreat Quit with other Pleasures that which proceeds from the Approbation of another And as to your Knowledg and Parts never concern your selves they will not lose their effect if your selves be ever the better for them Remember him who being ask'd why he took so much Pains in an Art that could come to the Knowledg of but few Persons A few are enough for me repli'd he I have enough of one I have enough of never a one He said true you and a Companion are Theatre enough to one another or you to your self Let us be to you the whole People and the whole People to you but one 'T is an unworthy Ambition to think to derive Glory from a Man's Sloath and Privacy You are to do like the Beasts of Chace who put out the Track at the entrance into their Den. You are no more to concern your self how the World talks of you but how you are to talk to your self Retire your self into your self but first prepare your self there to receive your self It were a folly to trust your self in your own Hands if you cannot Govern yourself a Man may as well miscarry alone as in Company till you have rendred your self as such as before whom you dare not Trip and till you have a Bashfulness and Respect for your self Observantur species honestae animo Let just and honest things be still Represented to the Mind Present continually to your Imagination Cato Phocio and Antistides in whose presence the Fools themselves will hide their Faults and make them Controulers of all your Intentions Should they deviate from Vertue your Respect to them will again set you right they will keep you in the way of being Contented with your self to Borrow nothing of any other but your self to restrain and fix your Soul in certain and limited Thoughts wherein she may please her self and having understood the true and real Goods which Men the more enjoy the more they understand to rest satisfied without desire of prolongation of Life or Memory This is the Precept of the True and Natural Philosophy not of a Boasting and Prating Philosophy such as that of the two former CHAP. XXXIX A Consideration upon Cicero ONe Word more by way of Comparison betwixt these two There are to be gather'd out of the Writings of Cicero and this Younger Pliny but little in my opinion resembling his Uncle in his Humour infinite Testimonies of a beyond measure Ambitious Nature and amongst others this for one that they both in the sight of all the World solicite the Historians of their time not to forget them in their Mesmoires and Fortune as if in spite has made the Vacancy of those Requests Live upon
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
torment to a truant abstinence from Wine to a good fellow frugality to the Spend-thrift and exercise to a Lazy tender bred fellow so it is of all the rest The things are not so painful and difficult of themselves but our weakness or cowardise makes them so To judge of great and high matters requires a suitable soul otherwise we attribute the vice to them which is really our own A straight Oar seems crooked in the Water It does not only import that we see the thing but how and after what manner we see it But after all this why amongst so many discourses that by so many arguments perswade Men to despise death and to endure pain can we not find out one that makes for us And of so many sorts of imaginations as have so prevailed upon others as to perswade them to do so why does not every one apply some one to himself the most suitable to his own humour If he cannot away with a strong working Aposence to eradicate the Evil let him at least take a Lenitive to ease it Opinio est quedam effeminata ac levis nec in dolore magis quam eadem in voluptate qua quum liquessimus fluimusque mollitia apis aculeum sine clamore ferre non possumus Totum in eo est ut tibi imperes There is a certain light and effeminate opinion and that not more in pain than it is even in pleasure it self by which whilst we rest and Wallow in ease and wantonness we cannot endure so much as the stinging of a Bee without roaring All that lies in it is only this to command thy self As to the rest a Man does not trangress Philosophy by permitting the acrimony of pains and humane frailty to prevail so much above measure for they will at last be reduc'd to these invincible replies If it be ill to live in necessity at least there is no necessity upon a man to live in necessity No man continues ill long but by his own fault And who has neither the Courage to Die nor the Heart to Live who will neither resist nor fly what should a Man do to him CHAP. XLI Not to Communicate a Mans Honour OF all the follies of the World that which is most universally receiv'd is the solicitude of Reputation and Glory which we are fond of to that degree as to abandon Riches Peace Life and Health which are effectual and substantial goods to pursue this vain Phantome and empty word that has neither body nor hold to be taken of it La fama ch' invaghisce a un dolce suono Gli superbi mortali et par ' si bella Eun echo un Sogno anzi d'un Sogno un ' ombra Ch' ad ogni vento si dilegua sgombra Honour that with such an alluring sound Proud mortals charms and does appear so fair An Eccho Dream shade of a Dream is found Disperst abroad by every breath of air And of all the irrational humours of Men it should seem that even the Philosophers themselves have the most ado and do the latest disengage themselves from this as the most resty and obstinate of all humane follies Quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non tessat Because it ceases not to attaque even the wisest and best letter'd minds There is not any one vice of which reason does so clearly accuse the vanity as of that but it is so deeply rooted in us that I dare not determine whether any one ever clearly depestred himself from it or no. After you have said all and believed all has been said to its prejudice it creates so intestine inclination in opposition to your best arguments that you have little power and constancy to resist it for as Cicero says even those who most controvert it would yet that the Books they write should visit the light under their own names and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it All other things are communicable and fall into commerce we lend our goods and stake our Lives for the necessity and service of our friends but to communicate a man's Honour and and to robe another with a man 's own Glory is very rarely seen And yet we have some examples of that kind Catulus Luctatius in the Cymbrian War having done all that in him lay to make his flying Souldiers face about upon the Enemy ran himself at last away with the rest and counterfeited the Coward to the end his men might rather seem to follow their Captain than to fly from the Enemy which was to abandon his own reputation to palliate the shame of others When Charles the Fifth came into Provence in the year 1537. 't is said that Antonio de Leva seeing the Emperour positively resolv'd upon this expedition and believing it would redound very much to his honour did nevertheless very stiffly oppose it in the Council to the end that the entire glory of that resolution should be attributed to his Master and that it might be said his own Wisdome and foresight had been such as that contrary to the opinion of all he had brought about so great and so generous an enterprize which was to do him honour at his own expence The Thracian Embassadors coming to comfort Archileonida the Mother of Brasidas upon the death of her Son and commending him to that height as to say he had not left his like behind him she rejected this private and particular commendation to attribute it to the publick Tell me not that said she I know the City of Sparta has several Citizens both greater and of greater valour than he In the Battel of Cressy the Prince of Wales being then very young had the Vantguard committed to him and the main stress of the Battel hapned to be in that place which made the Lords that were with him finding themselves overmatcht to send to King Edward that he would please to advance to their relief who thereupon enquiring of the condition his Son was in and being answered that he was yet living and on Horse-back I should then do him wrong said the King now to go and deprive him of the honour of winning this Battel he has so long and so bravely disputed what hazard soever he runs it shall be entirely his own and accordingly would neither go nor send knowing that if he went it would be said all had been lost without his succour and that the honour of the Victory would be wholly attributed to him Semper enim quod postremum adjectum est id rem totam videtur traxisse For the last stroak to a business seems to draw along with it the performance of the whole action Many at Rome thought and would usually say that the greatest of Scipio's Acts were in part due to Lelius whose constant practice it was still to advance and Shoulder Scipio's Grandeur and Renown without any care of his own And Theopompus King of Sparta to him who told him the republick
the business will be done throughout the Kingdome without an Edict we shall all follow It should be rather proclaim'd on the contrary that no one should wear Scarlet or Gold-smiths work but Whores and Tumblers Zeleucus with the like invention reclaim'd the corrupted manners of the Locrians Whose Lawes were that no free woman should be allow'd any more than one Maid to follow her unless she was drunk nor was to stir out of the City by night wear Jewels of Gold about her or go in an Embroidred Robe unless she was a profest and publick Whore The Bravo's and Ruffians excepted no man was to wear a Gold Ring nor be seen in one of those effeminate Vests woven in the City of Miletum By which infamous exceptions he discreetly diverted his Citizens from Superfluities and pernicious pleasures and it was a project of grean Utility to attract men by honour and Ambition to their Duty and Obedience Our Kings may do what they please in such external Reformations their own inclinations stands in this case for a Law Quicquid Principes faciunt precipere videnter What Princes themselves do they seem to enjoin others Whatever is done at Court passes for a rule through the rest of France Let the Courtiers but fall out with these abominable Breeches that discover so much of those parts should be concealed These great Bellied Doublets that make us look like I know not what and are so unfit to admit of Arms these long effeminate Locks of Hair This foolish Custom of Kissing what we present to our equals and our Hands in saluting them a ceremony in former times only due to Princes And that a Gentleman shall appear in place of respect without his Sword unbuttoned and untrust as though he came from the House of Office and that contrary to the custom of our Fore-fathers and the particular priviledge of the Nobless of this Kingdom we shall stand a long time bare to them in what place soever and the same to a hundred others so many Tierces and Quarts of Kings we have got now a days and also other the like innovations and degenerate customs they will see them all presently Vanisht and Cry'd down These are 't is true but superficial Errours but however of ill consequence and 't is enough to inform us that the whole Fabrick is Crazy and Tottering when we see the rough-cast of our Walls to cleave and split Plato in his Laws esteems nothing of more pestiferous consequence to his City than to give Young-Men the liberty of introducing any change in their Habits Gestures Dances Songs and Exercises from one form to another shifting from this to that Hunting after Novelties and applauding the Inventors by which means Manners are corrupted and the old institutions come to be nauseated and despised In all things saving only in those that are evil a change is to be fear'd even the change of Seasons Winds Viands and Humours And no Laws are in their true credit but such to which God has given so long a continuance that no one knows their beginning or that there ever was any other CHAP. XLIV Of Sleep REason directs that we should always go the same way but not always the same pace And consequently though a Wise Man ought not so much to give the Reins to humane Passions as to let them deviate him from the right Path he may notwithstanding without prejudice to his Duty leave it to them to hasten or to slack his speed and not fix himself like a motionless and insensible Coloss. Could Vertue it self put on Flesh and Blood I believe the Pulse would Beat faster going on to an Assault than in going to Dinner That is to say there is a necessity she should Heat and be mov'd upon this account I have taken notice as of an extraordinary thing of some great Men who in the highest Enterprizes and greatest Dangers have detain'd themselves in so settled and serene a Calm as not at all to hinder their usual Gayety or break their Sleep Alexander the Great on the Day assigned for that furious Battel betwixt him and Darius slept so profoundedly and so long in the Morning that Parmenio was forc't to enter his Chamber and coming to his Bedside to call him several times by his Name the time to go to Fight compelling him so to do The Emperour Otho having put on a resolution to Kill himself the same night after having settled his Domestick affairs divided his Money amongst his Servants and set a good edge upon a Sword he had made choice of for the purpose and now staying only to be satisfied whether all his friends were retir'd in safety he fell into so sound a sleep that the Gentlemen of his Chamber heard him Snore The death of this Emperour has in it circumstances parallelling that of the great Cato and particularly this before related For Cato being ready to dispatch himself whilst he only staid his hand in expectation of the return of a messenger he had sent to bring him news whether the Senators he had sent away were put out from the Port of Vtica he fell into so sound a sleep that they had him into the next Room and he whom he had sent to the Port having awak'd him to let him know that the Tempestuous Weather had hindred the Senators from putting to Sea he dispatcht away another messenger and composing himself again in the Bed settled again to sleep and did so till by the return of the last messenger he had certain intelligence they were gone We may here further compare him with Alexander too in that great and dangerous Storm that threatned him by the Sedition of the Tribune Metellus who attempting to publish a Decree for the calling in of Pompey with his Army into the City at the time of Catilines Conspiracy was only and that stoutly oppos'd by Cato so that very sharp language and bitter menaces past betwixt them in the Senate about that affair but it was the next day in the Fore-Nune that the controversie was to be decided where Metellus besides the favour of the people and of Caesar at that time of Pompeys Faction was to appear accompanied with a Rabble of Slaves and Fencers and Cato only fortified with his own Courage and Constancy so that his Relations Domesticks and several vertuous people of his Friends were in great apprehensions for him And to that Degree that some there were who past over the whole Night without Sleep Eating or Drinking for the manifest danger they saw him running into of which his Wife and Sisters did nothing but Weep and torment themselves in his House whereas he on the contrary Comforted every one and after having Supp'd after his usual manner went to Bed and slept profoundly till Morning that one of his fellow Tribunes rouz'd him to go to the encounter The knowledge we have of the greatness of this Mans Courage by the rest of his Life may warrant us securerly to judge that
let them be Gouty on Gods name so they were insensible of pain God gives us leave enough when he is pleased to reduce us to such a condition that to live is far worse than to die 'T is weakness to truckle under infirmities but it 's madnes to nourish them The Stoicks say that it is living according to Nature in a Wise man to take his leave of Life even in the height of prosperity if he do it opportunely and in a Fool to prolong it though he be miserable provided he be indigent of those things which are reputed the necessaries of human life As I do not offend the Law provided against Thieves when I embezel my own Money and cut my own Purse nor that against Incendiaries when I burn my own Wood so am I not under the lash of those made against Murtherers for having depriv'd my self of my own life Hegesius said that as the condition of life did so the condition of death ought to depend upon our own choice And Diogenes meeting the Philosopher Speucippus so blown up with an inveterate Dropsie that he was fain to be carried in a Litter and by him saluted with the complement of I wish you good health no health to thee reply'd the other who art content to live in such a condition And in truth not long after Speucippus weary of so languishing an estate of Life found a means to dye But this does not pass without admitting a dispute For many are of Opinion that we cannot quit this Garrison of the World without the express command of him who has plac'd us in it and that it appertains to God who has plac'd us here not for ourselves only but for his Glory and the service of others to dismiss us when it shall best please him and not for us to depart without his Licence That we are not born for ourselves only but for our Country also the Laws of which require an account from us upon the score of their own interest and have an action of Man-slaughter good against us Or if these fail to take cognizance of the Fact we are punish'd in the other World as deserters of our Duty Proxima deinde tenent maesti Loca qui sibi lethum Insontes peperere manu lucémque perosi Proiecere animas Next these those Melancholick Souls remain Who innocent by their own hands were slain And hating light to voluntary Death Ecclipst their eye-balls and bequeath'd their breath There is more Constancy in suffering the Chain we are tied in than in breaking it and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in Cato 'T is Indiscretion and Impatience that pushes us on to these precipices No accidents can make true Vertue turn her back she seeks and requires Evils Pains and Grief as the things by which she is nourish'd and supported The menaces of Tyrants Wracks and Tortures serve only to animate and rouse her Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido Per damna per caedes ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro As in Mount Algidus the sturdy Oak Ev'n from th' injurious Axes wounding stroak Derives new vigour and does further spread By amputations a more graceful head And as another says Non est ut putas virtus Pater Timere vitam sed malis ingentibus Obstare nec se vertere ac retro dare They are mistaken and do judge amiss Who think to fear to live a Vertue is He 's brave the greatest evils can withstand And not retire nor shift to either hand Or as this Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem Fortius ille facit qui miser esse potest The wretched well may laugh at death but he Is braver far can live in misery 'T is Cowardize not Vertue to lye squat in furrow under a Tomb to evade the blows of Fortune Vertue never stops nor goes out of her path for the greatest storm that blows Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidam ferient ruinae Should the World's Axis crack and Sphear fall down The ruins would but crush a fearless Crown And for the most part the flying of other inconveniences brings us to this that endeavouring to evade death we run into the mouth of it Hic rogo non furor est ne moriare mori Can there be greater madness pray reply Than that one should for fear of dying die Like those who for fear of a precipice throw themselves headlong into it Multos in summa pericula misit Venturi timor ipse mali Fortissimus ille est Qui promptus metuenda pati si cominus instent Et differre potest The fear of future ills oft makes men run Into far worse than those they strive to shun But he deserves the noblest Character Dare boldly stand the mischeifs he does fear When they confront him and appear in view And can defer at least if not eschew usque adeo mortis formidine vitae Percipit humanos odium lucisque videndae Vt sibi consciscant maerenti pectore lethum Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem Death unto that degree does some men fright That causing them to hate both life and light They kill themselves in sorrow not aware That this same fear 's the fountaine of that care Plato in his laws assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has depriv'd his nearest and best freind namely himself of life and his destin'd course of years being neither compell'd so to do by publick judgment by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune nor by any insupportable disgrace but merely pusht on by cowardize and the imbecillity of a timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life is ridiculous for it is our being 't is all we have Things of a nobler and more elevated being may indeed accuse this of ours but it is against nature for us to contemn and make little account of our selves 't is a disease particular to man and not discern'd in any other creatures to hate and despise itself And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire be something else than what we are The effects oâ— such a desire do not at all concern us for as much as it is contradicted and hindred in it self and he that desires of a man to be made an Anâ—gel wishes nothing for himself he would bâ— never the better for it for being no more whâ—â— should rejoice or be sensible of this benefit foâ— him Debet enim miserè cui fortè aegréque futurum est Ipse quoque esse in eo tum tempore cùm male possit Accidere For it is necessary sure that he Who for the future wretched is to be Should then be by himself inhabited That the events of Fate been frustrated But that the ills he threatned is withall Should rightly in their due appointment fall Security indolency impassibility and the privation of the evils of
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
their death which is accordingly pay'd them The death of the forenamed Bishop with his sword in his hand has more of generosity in it and less of feeling the ardour of Combat taking away part of the later There are some Governments who have taken upon them to regulate the Justice and opportunity of voluntary death so much as in former times there was kept in our City of Marseilles a Poyson prepared out of Hemlock at the publick charge for those who had a mind to hasten their end having first before the six hundred which were their Senat given account of the reasons and motives of their design and it was not otherwise Lawful than by leave from the Magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence to themselves The same Law was also in use in other places Sextus Pompeius in his Expedition into Asia toucht at the Isle of Cea in Negropont it accidentally hapned whilst he was there as we have it from one that was with him that a woman of great quality having given an account to her Citizens why she was resolv'd to put an end to her life invited Pompeius to her death to render it the more honorable an invitation that he vnwillingly accepted but having long tried in vaiâ— by the power of his eloquence which waâ— very great and disswasion to divert her froâ— that design he acquiese't in the end in her owâ— will She had past the age of fourscore anâ— ten in a very happy Estate both of Body anâ— mind but being then laid upon her bed betteâ— drest than ordinary and leaning upon heâ— Elbow the Gods said she O Sextus Pompeiuâ— and rather those I leave than those I go to seeâ— reward thee for that thou hast not disdain'd 〈◊〉 be both the Counsellor of my life and thâ— Witness of my death For my part havinâ— always try'd the smiles of fortune for 〈◊〉 lest the desire of living too long may maâ—â— me see a contrary face I am going by a haâ—â—py end to dismiss the remains of my Soâ—â— leaving behind two daughters of my Boâ—â— and a Legion of Nephewes which having 〈◊〉 with some exhortations to her family to 〈◊〉 in peace she divided amongst them her Good and recommending her domestick Gods 〈◊〉 her eldest daughter she boldly took the Boâ—â— that contain'd the Poison and having maâ—â— her vowes and prayers to Mercury to coâ—â—duct her to some happy abode in the othâ—â— World she roundly swallow'd the mortal Pâ—â—tion which having don she entertained 〈◊〉 company with the progress of its operatiâ—â— and how the cold by degrees seized the seâ—â—â—ral parts of her body one after another 〈◊〉 having in the end told them it began to seize upon her heart and bowels she call'd her daughters to do their last Office and close her Eyes Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean Nation where by reason of the sweet temperature of the Aire Lives did rarely end but by the voluntary surrender of the Inhabitants but that being weary of and sotted with living they had a custom at a very old age after having made good cheer to precipitate themselves into the Sea from the top of a certain rock destin'd for that service Paine and the fear of a worse death seem to me the most excusable incitements CHAP. IV. To morrow's a new Day I Give and I think with good reason the Palm to Jacques Amiot of all our French Writers not only for the propriety and purity of his language wherein he excells all others nor for his constancy in going thorough so long a work nor for the depth of his knowledge having been able so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an Author for let People tell me what they will I understand nothing of Greek but I meet with sence so well united and maintained throughout his whole Translation that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the Author or having by being long conversant with him imprinted a lively and general â—dea of that of Plutarch in his Soul he has delivered us nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him but above all I am the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choise of a Book so worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his Country We dunces had been lost had not this Book raised us out of the dirt by this favour of his we dare now speak and write the Ladies are able to read to Schoolmasters 't is our Breviary If this good Man be yet living I would recommend to him Xenophon to do as much by that 'T is a much more easy task than the other and consequently more proper for his age And besides I know not how methinks though he does briskly and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled at that nevertheless his style seemes to be more his own where he does not encounter those difficulties and rowles away at his own ease I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself that Rusticus being present at a Declamation of his at Rome he there receiv'd a Packet from the Emperor and deferr'd to open it till all was don for which says he all the company highly applauded the gravity of this person 'T is true that being upon the discourse of that curiosity and that eager passion for news which makes us with so much indiscretion and impatience leave all to entertain a new commer and without any manner of respect or civility teare open on a suddain in what company soever the Letters are delivered to us he had reason to applaud the gravity of Rusticus upon this occasion and might moreover have added to it the commendation of his civility and courtesy that would not interrupt the current of his Declamation But I doubt whether any one can commend his prudence for receiving unexpected Letters and especially from an Emperor it might have fal'n out that the deferring to read them might have been of great prejudice The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence to which I naturally incline and wherein I have seen some Men so extream that one might have found the Letters had been sent them three or four days before still seal'd up in their pockets I never open any Letters directed to another not only those entrusted with me but even such as fortune has guided to my hand and am very angry with my self if my Eyes unawares steal any contents of Letters of importance he is reading when I stand near a great Man Never was Man less inquisitive or less prying into other mens affairs than I. In our Fathers days Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin for having being engag'd in good company at supper deferred to read an Advertisement was sent him of the Treason was plotted against that City where he commanded And this very Plutarch has given me to understand that Julius Caesar had preserved himself if going to the Senate the day he was
that purpose produc't a Book from under his Robe wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts and disbursments but being required to deliver it to the Pronotary to be examined and enrolled he refused saying he would not do himself so great a disgrace and in the presence of the whole Senate tore the Book with his own hands to peices I do not believe that the most fear'd Conscience could have counterfeited so great an assurance He had naturally too high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune says Titus Livius to know how to be criminal and to dispose himself to the meanness of defending his innocency This putting men to the Rack is a dangerous invention and seemes to be rather a tryal of patience than truth Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth and he who has not for why should paine sooner make me to confesse what really is than force me to say what is not And on the contrary if he who is not guilty of that whereof he is accused has the courage to undergo those torments why should not he who is guilty have the same so fair a reward as life being in his prospect I think the ground of this invention proceeds from the consideration of the force of Conscience For to the guilty it seemes to assist the Rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution and on the other side that it fortifies the innocent against the torture But when 's all 's don 't is in plain truth a tryal full of incertainty and danger What would not a man say what would not a man do to avoid so intolerable torments Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor Pain the most innocent will make to lye Whence it comes to pass that he whom the Judg has rackt that he may not dye innocent he makes him die both innocent and rackt A thousand and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions Amongst which I place Philotas considering the circumstances of the Tryal Alexander put him upon and the progress of his torture But so it is says one that it is the least evill humane weakness could invent very inhumanely notwithstanding and to very little purpose in my opinion Many Nations less Barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call them so repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to peices for a fault of which they are yet in doubt How can he help your ignorance Are not you unjust that not to kill him without cause do worse than kill him And that this is so do but observe how many ways he had rather die without Reason than undergo this Examination more painful than Execution it self and that oft-times by its extremity prevents Execution and dispatches him I know not where I had this Story but it exactly matches the Conscience of our Justice in this particular A Country woman to a General of very severe Discipline accused one of his Souldiers that he had taken from her Children the little milke she had lest to nourish them withal the Army having consum'd all the rest but of this Proof there was none The General after having caution'd the woman to take good heed to what she said for that she would make herself guilty of a false Accusation if she told a lie and she persisting he presently caused the Souldiers belly to be ript up to clear the truth of the fact and the Woman was found to be in the right An instructive Sentence CHAP. VI. Vse makes Perfectness 'T IS not to be expected that Argument and Instruction though we never so voluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us should be of force to lead us on so far as to Action if we do not over and above exercise and form the Soul by Experience to the course for which we design it it will otherwise doubtless find it self at a loss when it comes to the pinch of the business This is the reason why those amongst the Philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence were not contented to expect the severities of fortune in their retirement and repose of their own habitations lest she should have surpriz'd them raw and unexpert in the Combat but sallied out to meet her and purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties Some of which abandon'd Riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary proverty others have sought out labour and an â—usterity of life to inure them to hard-ships and inconveniencies others have deprived themselves of their dearest members as of their sight and instruments of Generation left their too delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the stability of their Souls But in dying which is the greatest work we have to do Practice is out of doors and can give us no assistance at all A man may by custom fortisie himself against paines shame necessity and such like accidents but as to death we can experiment it but once and are all Apprentices when we come to it There have antiently been men so excellent managers of their time that they have tried even in death it self to relish and tast it and who have bent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is but they are none of them come back to tell us the news Nemo expergitus extat Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa sequuta No one was ever known to wake Who once in deaths cold arms a nap did take Canius Julius a noble Roman of singular constancy and vertue having been condemn'd to die by that Beast Caligula besides many admirable testimonies that he gave of his resolution as he was just going to receive the stroke of the Executioner was askt by a Philosoper a freind of his well Canius said he wherabout is your Soul now What is she doing What are you thinking of I was thinking reply'd the other to keep my self ready and the faculties of my mind settled and fixt to try if in this short and quick instant of death I could perceive the motion of the Soul when she parts from the body and whether she has any resentment at the separation that I may after come again if I can to acquaint my freinds with it This man Philosophizes not unto death onely but in death self What a strange assurance was this and what bravery of courage to desire his death should be a lesson to him and to have leisure to think of other things in so great an affair Jus hoc animi morientis habebat This mighty pow'r of mind he dying had And yet I fancy there is a certain way of making it familiar to us and in some sort of making tryal what it is We may gain experience if not entire and perfect yet such at least as shall not be totally useless to us and that may render us more assur'd If we cannot overtake it we
may approach it and view it and if we do not advance so far as to the Fort we may at least discover it and make our selves perfect in the Avenues It is not without reason that we are taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death With how great facility do we pass from waking to sleeping and with how little concern do we lose the knowledg of light and of ourselves Peradâ—â—nture the faculty of sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature being it deprives us of all action and sense were it not that by it Nature instructs us that she has equally made us to die as to live and from life presents us the Eternal Estate she reserves for us after it to accustom us to it and to take from us the fear of it But such as have by some violent accident fallen into a swoon and in it have lost all sense these methinks have been very near seeing the true and natural face of death for as to the moment of the passage it is not to be fear'd that it brings with it any pain or displeasure for as much as we can have no feeling without leisure Our sufferings require time which in death is so short and so precipitous that it must necessarily be insensible They are the approaches that we are to fear and those may fall within the limits of experience Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect I have past a good part of my age in a perfect and entire health I say not only entire but moreover spritely and wanton This estate so full of verdure jollity and vigour made the consideration of sickness so formidable to me that when I came to experiment it I found the attacques faint and easy in comparison of what I had apprehended Of this I have daily experience If I am under the shelter of a warm room in a stormy and tempestuous night I wonder how People can live abroad and am afflicted for those who are out in the 〈◊〉 If I am there my self I do not wish to be any where else This one thing of being always shut up in a chamber I fancâ—ed insupportable but I was presently inur'd to be so imprison'd a week nay a month togeather And have found that in the time of my health I did much more lament the sick than I think my self to be lamented when I am so and that the force of my imagination enhances near one half of the essence and reality of the thing I hope that when I come to die I shall find the same and that I shall not find it worth the pains I take so much preparation and so much assistance as I call in to undergo the stroak But we cannot give our selves too much advantage at all adventures In the time of our third or second troubles I do not well remember which going one day abroad to take the aire about a league from my own house which is seated in the very Center of all the bustle and mischeif of the late Civil wars of France thinking my self in all security and so near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better Equipage I had taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace but was not very strong Being upon my return home a suddain occasion falling out to make use of this horse in a kind of service that he was not acquainted with one of my train a lusty proper fellow mounted upon a strong German horse that had a very ill mouth but was otherwise vigorous and unfoild to play the Bravo and appear a better man than his fellowes comes thundring full speed in the very track where I was rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse with such a carreer of strength and weight that he turn'd us both over and over topsy turvy with our heeles in the aire so that there lay the horse over thrown and stun'd with the fall and I ten or twelve paces from him stretcht out at length with my face all batter'd and broken my sword which I had in my hand above ten paces beyond that and my belt broke all to pieces without motion or sence any more than a stock 'T was the only swoon I was ever in till this hour in my life Those who were with me after having used all the means they could to bring me to my self concluding me dead took me up in their arms and carried me with very much difficulty home to my house which was about half a French league from thence Having been by the way and two long hours after given over for a dead man I began to move and to fetch my breath for so great abundance of blood was fall'n into my stomack that Nature had need to rouse her forces to discharge it They then raised me upon my feet where I threw off a great quantity of pure Florid blood as I had also don several times by the way which gave me so much ease that I began to recover a little life but so leisurely and by so small advances that my first sentiments were much neare the approaches of death than life Perche dubbiosa anchor del suo ritorna Non s'assecura attonita la mente Because the Soul her mansion half had quit And was not sure she was return'd to it The remembrance of this accident which is very well imprinted in my memory so naturally representing to me the Image and Idea of death has in some sort reconcil'd me to that untoward accident When I first began to â—pen my eyes after my trance it was with so perplex't so weak and dead a sight that I could yet distinguish nothing and could only discern the light Come quel ch'or apre or chiude Gli occhi mezzo tra'l sonno è l'esser desto As people in the morning when they rise 'Twixt sleep and wake open and shut their eyes As to the functions of the Soul they advanced with the same pace and measure with those of the Body I saw my self all bloody my doublet being stain'd and spotted all over with the blood I had vomited and the first thought that came into my mind was that I had a Harquebuze shot in my head and indeed at the same time there were a great many fir'd round about us Methought my life but just hung upon my lips and I shut my eyes to help methought to thrust it out and took a pleasure in languishing and letting my self go It was an imagination that only superficially sloâ—ed upon my Soul as tender and weak as all the rest but really not only exempt from pain but mixt with that sweetness and pleasure that People are sensible of when they indulge themselves to drop into a slumber I beleive it is the very same condition those People are in whom we see to swoon with weakness in she agonie of death and am of opinion that we lament them without cause supposing
this Death and the Facility of Dying he had acquired by the vigour of his Soul shall we say that it ought to abate any thing of the lustre of his Vertue And who that has his Brain never so little tinctur'd with the true Philosophy can be content to imagine Socrates only free from Fear and Passion in the Accident of his Prison Fetters and Condemnation And that will not discover in him not only Stability and Constancy which was his ordinary Composure but moreover I know not what new Satisfaction and a frolick Chearfulness in his last Words and Actions At the Start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his Leg when his Irons were taken off does he not discover an equal Serenity and Joy in his Soul for being freed from past Inconveniences and at the same time to enter into the Knowledge of things to come Cato shall pardon me if he please his Death indeed is more tragical and more taken notice of but yet this is I know not how methinks finer Aristippus to one that was lamenting his Death The Gods grant me such an one said he A Man discerns in the Souls of these two great Men and their Imitators for I very much doubt whether there was ever their like so perfect a Habitude to Vertue that it was turn'd to a Complection It is no more a laborious Vertue nor the Precepts of Reason to maintain which the Soul is so wracked but the very Essence of their Souls their natural and ordinary Habit. They have rendred it such by a long Practice of Philosophical Precepts having light upon a rich and ingenious Nature The vicious Passions that spring in us can find no Entrance into them The Force and Vigour of their Souls stifle and extinguish irregular Desires so soon as they begin to move Now that it is not more noble by a high and divine Resolution to hinder the Birth of Temptations and to be so form'd to Vertue that the very Seeds of Vice be rooted out than to hinder their Progress and having suffer'd themselves to be surprized with the first Motions of Passions to arm themselves and to stand firm to oppose their Progress and overcome them And that this second Effect is not also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a frail and affable Nature of it self disaffected to Debauchery and Vice I do not think can be doubted for this third and last sort of Vertue seems to render a Man innocent but not vertuous free from doing ill but not apt enough to do well considering also that this Condition is so near Neighbour to Imperfection and Cowardize that I know not very well how to separate the Confines and distinguish them The very name of Good Nature and Innocence are for this reason in some sort grown into Contempt I very well know that several Vertues as Chastity Sobriety and Temperance may come to a Man through Personal Defects Constancy in Danger if it must be so called the Contempt of Death and Patience in Misfortunes may oft times be found in Men for want of well judging of such Accidents and not apprehending them for such as they are Want of Apprehension and Sottishness do sometimes counterfeit vertuous Effects As I have oft seen it happen that Men have been commended for what really merited Blame An Italian Lord once said this in my presence to the disadvantage of his own Nation That the Subtilty of the Italians and the Vivacity of their Conceptions were so great that they foresaw the Dangers and Accidents that might befal them so far off that it must not be thought strange if they were often in War observed to provide for their Safety even before they had discover'd the Peril That we French and Spaniards who were not so cunning went on further and that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take the Alarm and that even then we had no Apprehension But the Germans and Swisse more heavy and thick-skull'd had not the Sense to look about them even then when the Blows were falling about their Ears Peradventure he only talk'd so for Mirths sake and yet it is most certain that in War raw Soldiers rush into danger with more Precipitancy than after they have been well cudgell'd Haud ignarus quantùm nova gloria in armis Et praedulce decus primo certamine possit Not ign'rant in the first Essay of Arms How hope of Glory the raw Soldier warms For this reason it is that when we judge of a particular Action we are to consider several Circumstances and the whole Man by whom it is perform'd before we give it a name To instance in my self I have sometimes known my Friends call that Prudence in me which was meerly Fortune and repute that Courage and Patience which was Judgment and Opinion and attribute to me one Title for another sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise As to the rest I am so far from being arriv'd at the first and most perfect degree of Excellence where Vertue is turn'd into Habit that even of the second I have made no great Tryal I have not been very solicitous to curb the Desires by which I have been importun'd My Vertue is a Vertue or rather an Innocence casual and accidental If I had been born of a more irregular Complection I am afraid I should have made scurvy work for I never observ'd any great Stability in my Soul to resist Passions if they were never so little vehement I have not the knack of nourishing Quarrels and Debates in my own Bosom and consequently owe my self no great Thanks that I am free from several Vices Si vitiis mediocribus mea paucis Mendosa est natura alioqui recta velut si Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos If of small Crimes and few my Nature be To be accus'd and from the great ones free Those Venial Faults will no more spot my Soul Than a fair Body's blemish'd with a Mole I owe it rather to my Fortune than my Reason She has made me to be descended of a Race famous for Integrity and of a very good Father I know not whether or no he has infus'd into me part of his Humours or whether Domestick Examples and the good Education of my Infancy hath insensibly assisted in the Work or if I was otherwise born so Seu Libra seu me Scorpius aspicit Formidolosus pars violentior Natalis horae seu tyrannus Hesperiae Capricornus unde Whether the Ballance weigh'd my future Fate Or Scorpio Lord of my Ascendent sate Or Tyrant Capricorn that rudely sways And ruffles up the Occidental Seas But so it is that I have naturally a Horror for most Vices The Answer of Antisthenes to him who askt him Which was the best Apprentisage To unlearn Evil seems to point at this I have them in Horror I say with a Detestation so Natural and so much my own that
would go equal in our Affections with Riches Pleasures Glory and our Friends The best of us is not so much afraid to injure him as he is afraid to injure his Neighbour his Kinsman or his Master Is there any so weak Understanding that having on one side the Object of one of our vicious Pleasures and on the other in equal knowledge and perswasion the State of an Immortal Glory will dispute for the first against the other And yet we oftimes renounce this out of pure Contempt For what lust tempts us to blaspheme if not peradventure the very desire to offend The Philosopher Antisthenes as the Priest was initiating him in the Mysteries of Orpheus telling him that those who profest themselves of that Religion were certain to receive Perfect and Eternal Felicities after Death if thou believest that answered he Why doest not thou dye thy self Diogenes more rudely according to his manner and more remote from our purpose to the Preist that in like manner preached to him to become of his Religion that he might obtain the Happiness of the other World What said he Thou wouldest have me believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas who were so Great Men shall be miserable and that thou who art but a Calf and canst do nothing to purpose shalt be happy because thou art a Priest Did we receive these great Promises of Eternal Beatitude with the same Reverence and Respect that we do a Philosophical Lecture we should not have Death in so great Horror Non jam se moriens dissolvi conquereretur Sed magis ire foras vestémque relinquere ut anguis Gauderet praelonga senex aut cornua Cervus We should not then dying repine to be Dissolv'd but rather step out chearfully From our Old Hut and with the Snake be glad To cast the Old uneasie slough we had Or with th' Old Stag rejoyce to be now clear From the large Head too pondrous grown to bear I desire to be dissolv'd we should say and to be with Jesus Christ. The force of Plato's Arguments concerning the Immortality of the Soul sent some of his Disciples to untimely Graves that they might the sooner enjoy the things he had made them hope for All which is a most evident sign that we only receive our Religion after our own fashion by our own hands and no otherwise than other Religions are receiv'd Either we are come into the Country where it is in Practice or we bear a Reverence to the Antiquity of it or to the Authority of the Men who have maintained it or fear the Menaces it fulminates against Miscreants or are allur'd by its Promises These Considerations ought 't is true to be applyed to our Belief but as Subsidiaries only for they are Human Obligations Another Religion other Witnesses the like Promises and Threats might by the same way imprint a quite contrary Belief We are Christians by the same Title that we are Perigordins and Germans And what Plato says that there are few Men so obstinate in their Atheism that a pressing Danger will not reduce to an Acknowledgment of the Divine Power does not concern a true Christian 't is for Mortal and Human Religions to be received by Human Recommendation What kind of Faith can we expect that should be that Cowardize and want of Courage does establish in us A pleasant Faith that does not believe what it believes but for want of Courage to believe it Can a vicious Passion such as Inconstancy and Astonishment cause any regular Product in our Souls They are confident in their own Judgment says he That what is said of Hell and future Torments is all feign'd But an Occasion of making the Experiment presenting it self that Old Age or Diseases bring them to the Brink of the Grave the Terrour of Death by the Horror of that future Condition inspires them with a new Belief And by reason that such Impressions render them timorous he forbids in his Laws all such threatning Doctrines and all Perswasion that any thing of ill can befall a Man from the Gods excepting for his great good when they happen to him and for a Medicinal effect They say of Bion that infected with the Atheisms of Theodorus he had long had Religious Men in great scorn and contempt but that Death surprising him he gave himself up to the most extream Superstition as if the Gods withdrew and return'd according to the Necessities of Bion. Plato and his Examples would conclude that we are brought to a Belief of God either by reason or by force Atheism being a Proposition as unnatural and monstruous so difficult also and very hard to sink into Human Understanding how arrogant and irregular soever there are enow seen out of Vanity and Pride to be the Author of extraordinary and reforming Opinions have outwardly affected the Profession who if they are such Fools have nevertheless not had the power to plant them in their own Conscience Yet will they not fail to lift up their Hands towards Heaven if you give them a good thrust with a Sword into the Bosom and when Fear or Sickness has abated and supprest the licentious Fury of this giddy Humour they will easily reunite and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the Publick Faith and Examples A Doctrine seriously disgested is one thing and those superficial Impressions another which springing from the Disorder of an unhing'd Understanding float at random and great uncertainty in the Fancy Miserable and senseless Men who strive to be worse than they can The Error of Paganism and the Ignorance of our Sacred Truth let this great Soul but great only in Human Greatness fall yet into this other Mistake that Children and Old Men were most susceptible of Religion as if it sprung and deriv'd its Reputation from our Weakness The Knot that ought to bind the Judgment and the Will that ought to restrain the Soul and joyn it to the Creator must be a Knot that derives the Foldings and Strength not from our Considerations from our Reasons and Passions but from a Divine and Supernatural Constraint having but one Form one Face and one Lustre which is the Authority of God and his Divine Grace Now the Heart and Soul being governed and commanded by Faith 't is but reason that they should muster all their other Faculties for as much as they are able to perform to the Service and Assistance of their Design Neither is it to be imagined that all this Machin has not some Marks imprinted upon it by the Hand of the mighty Architect and that there is not in the thing of this World some Image that in some measure resembles the Workman who has built and form'd them He has in his stupendious Works left the Character of his Divinity and 't is our own Weakness only that hinders us we cannot discern it 'T is what he himself is pleased to tell us that he manifests his invisible Operations to us by
it And 't is a good way to retinue and keep any thing safe in the Soul to solicite her to lose it And this is false Est situm in nobis ut adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus secunda jucundè suaviter meminerimus And it is in our power to bury as it were in a perpetual Oblivion all adverse Accidents and to retein a pleasant and delightful Memory of our Successes And this is true Memini etiam quae nolo Oblivisci non possum quae volo I do also remember what I would not but I cannot forget what I would And whose Counsel is this His qui se unus sapientem profiteri fit ausus Who only durst profess himself a Wise Man Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit omnes Praestrinxit Stellas exortus uti aetherius Sol. Who from Mankind the prize of Knowledge won And put the Stars out like a rising Sun To empty and disfurnish the Memory is not this the true way to Ignorance Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est Ignorance is but a dull remedy for Evils We find several other like Precepts whereby we are permitted to borrow frivolous apparences from the Vulgar where we find the greatest reason cannot do the Feat Provided they administer Satisfaction and Comfort Where they cannot cure the Wound they are content to palliate and benumn it I believe they will not deny this that if they could add Order and Constancy in an estate of Life that could maintain it self in Ease and Pleasure by some Debility of Judgment they would accept it potare spargere flores Incipiam patià rque vel inconsultus haberi I 'll drink and revel like a jovial Lad Though for my pains the World repute me mad There would be a great many Philosophers of Lycas his Mind This Man being otherwise of very gentle Manners living quietly and contentedly in his Family and not failing in any Office of his Duty either towards his own or Strangers and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things was nevertheless by some Distemper in his Brains possessed with a Conceit that he was perpetually in the Theatre a Spectator of the finest sights and the best Comedies in the World and being cur'd by the Physitians of his Frenzy had much adoe to forbear endeavouring by Suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing Imaginations pol me occidistis amici Non servastis ait cui sic extorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error By Heaven you have kill'd mee Friends outright And not preserv'd me since my dear delight And pleasing error by my better sence Unhappily return'd is banish'd hence With a madness like that of Thrasylaus the Son of Pythodorus who made himself believe that all the Ships that weigh'd Anchor from the Port of Pyreum and that came into the Haven only made their Voyages for his Profit Congratulating them for their happy Navigation and receiving them with the greatest Joy whom his Brother Crito having caused to be restored to his better Understanding he infinitely regretted that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and free from all Anxiety of Mind 'T is according to the Old Greek Verse that there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Ecclesiastes In much Wisdom there is much Sorrow And who gets Wisdom gets Labour and Trouble Even that to which Philosophy consents in general that last Remedy which she applys to all sorts of Necessities to put an end to the Life we are not able to endure it Placet Pare Non placet Quacunque vis exi Pungit dolor Fodiat sanè Si nudus es da jugulum Sin tectus armis vulcanis id est fortitudine resiste Does it please Obey it Not please Go out how thou wilt Does Grief prick thee Nay if it stab thee too If thou art naked present thy Throat If covered with the Arms of Vulcan that is Fortitude resist it And this word so us'd in the Greek Festivals aut bibat aut abeat That sounds better upon the Tongue of a Gascon who naturally change the V. into B. than upon that of Cicero Vivere si rectè nescis decede peritis Lusisti satis edisti satis atque bibisti Tempus abire tibi est ne potum largius aequo Rideat pulset lasciva decentius aetas If to live well and right thou doest not know Give place and leave thy Room to those that doe Th' ast eaten drank and plaid to thy content 'T is time to make thy parting Complement Least being over-dos't the younger sort Laugh at thee first and than exclude thee for 't What is it other than a Confession of his Impotency and a sending back not only to Ignorance to be there in safety but even to Stupidity Insensibility and Nonentity Democritum postquà m matura vetustas Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse Soon as through Age Democritus did find A manifest Decadence in his Mind He thought he now surviv'd to his own wrong And went to meet his Death that stay'd too long 'T is what Antisthenes said That a Man must either make provision of Sense to understand Or of a Halter to hang himself And what Crysippus alledged upon this Saying of the Poet Tyrteus De la vertu ou de mort approcher Or to arrive at Vertue or at Death And Crates said That Love would be cur'd by Hunger if not by time And whoever disliked these two Remedies by a With. That Sextius of whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an Encomium having applyed himself all other things set aside to the Study of Philosophy resolv'd to throw himself into the Sea seeing the Progress of his Studies too tedious and slow He ran to find Death since he could not overtake Knowledge These are the words of the Law upon this Subject If peradventure some great inconvenience happen for which there is no remedy the Haven is near and a Man may save himself by swimming out of his Body as out of a leaky Skiff for 't is the Fear of Dying and not the Love of Life that ties the Fool to his Body As Life renders it self by Simplicity more pleasant so more innocent and better as I was saying before The simple and ignorant says St. Paul raise themselves up to Heaven and take possession of it and we with all our Knowledge plunge our selves into the infernal Abyss I am neither swaid by Valentinian a profest Enemy to all Knowledge and Literature nor by Licinius both Roman Emperours who called them the Poyson and Pest of all Politick Governments Nor by Mahomet who as 't is said interdicted all manner of Learning to his Followers But the Example of the Great Lycurgus and his Authority with the Reverence of the Divine Lacedemonian
fall of the Soul as well as of the Body Contrahi animum quasi labi putat atque decidere He thinks the Mind is transported and that it slips and falls And what they perceiv'd in some that the Soul maintained its force and vigour to the last gasp of Life they attributed to the variety of Diseases as it is observable in Men at the last Extremity that some retain one Sence and some another one the Hearing and another the Smell without any manner of Defects or Alteration and that there is no so universal a Deprivation that some parts do not remain vigorous and entire Non alio pacto quà m si pes cum dolet agri In nullo caput intera sit fortè dolore As if a sick Man's Foot in pain should be And yet his Head perhaps from Dolours free The sight of our Judgment is to Truth the same that the Owles Eyes are to the Sun says Aristotle By what can we better convince him than by so gross Blindness in so apparent a Light For the contrary Opinion of the immortality of the Soul which Cicero says was first introduc'd by the Testimony of the Authors at least by Pherecides Syrius in the time of King Tullus though others attribute it to Thales and others to others 't is the part of human Science that is treated of with the most doubt and the greatest reservation The most positive Dogmatists are in this point principally to fly to the Refuge of Academy No one knows what Aristotle has established upon this Subject no more than all the Ancients in general who handle it with a wavering Belief Rem gratissimam promittentium magis quà m probantium A thing more acceptable in the Promisers than the Provers He conceals himself in clouds of Words of difficult and unintelligible Sense and has left to those of his Sect as great a Dispute about his Judgment as the matter it self Two things rendred this Opinion plausible to them One that without the immortality of Souls there would be nothing whereon to ground the vain Hopes of Glory which is a Consideration of wonderful Repute in the World The other that it is a very profitable Impression as Plato says that Vices when they escape the Discovery and Cognizance of human Justice are still within the reach of the Divine which will pursue them even after the Death of the Guilty Man is excessively solicitous to prolong his Being and has to the utmost of his Power provided for it Monuments are erected and embalming in use for the Conservation of the Body and glory to preserve the Name He has employed all his Wit and Opinion to the rebuilding of himself impatient of his Form and to prop himself by his Inventions The Soul by reason of its Anxiety and Impotence being unable to stand by it self wanders up and down to seek out Consolations Hopes and Foundations and alien Circumstances to which she adheres and fixes And how light or fantastick soever Invention delivers them to it relies more willingly and with greater Assurance upon them than it self But 't is wonderful to observe how short the most constant and obstinate Maintainers of this just and clear Persuasion of the Immortality of the Soul do fall and how weak their Arguments are when they go about to prove it by human Reason Somnia sunt non docentis sed optantis They are Dreams not of the Teacher but Wisher says one of the Antients By which Testimony Man may know that he owes the Truth he himself finds out to Fortune and Accident since that even then when it is fallen into his Hand he has not wherewith to hold and maintain it and that his Reason has not Force to make use of it All things produc'd by our own Meditation and Understanding whether true or false are subject to Incertitude and Controversy 'T was for the Chastisement of our Pride and for the Instruction of our Misery and Incapacity that God wrought the Perplexity and Confusion at the Tower of Babel Whatever we undertake without his Assistance whatever we see without the Lamp of his Grace is but Vanity and Folly We corrupt the very Essence of Truth which is uniform and constant by our Weakness when Fortune puts it into our Possession What Course soever Man takes of himself God still permits it to come to the same Confusion the Image whereof he so lively represents to us in the just Chastisement wherewith he crusht Nimrod's Presumption and frustrated the vain Attempt of his proud Structure Perdam sapientiam sapientium prudentiam prudentium reprobabe I will destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and will bring to nothing the Vnderstanding of the Prudent The Diversity of Idiomes and Languages with which he disturb'd this work what are they other than this infinite and perpetual alteration and discordance of Opinions and Reasons which accompany and confound the vain Building of human Wisdom And 't is to very good effect that they do so For what would hold us if we had but the least grain of Knowledg This Saint has very much oblig'd me Ipsa utilitatis occultatio aut humilitatis exercitatio est aut elationis attritio The very concealment of the Vtility is either an exercise of Humility or a quelling of Presumption To what a pitch of Presumption and Insolence do we raise our Blindness and Folly But to return to my Subject it was truly very good Reason that we should be beholding to God only and to the favour of his Grace for the Truth of so noble a Belief since from his sole Bounty we receive the Fruit of Immortality which consists in the Enjoyment of eternal Beatitude Let us ingeniously confess that God alone has dictated it to us and the Faith For 't is no Lesson of Nature and our own Reason And whoever will enquire into his own Being and Power both within and without without this divine Privilege Whoever shall consider Man impartially and without Flattery will see nothing in him of Efficacy nor any kind of Faculty that relishes of any thing but Death and Earth The more we give and confess to owe and render to God we do it with the greater Christianity That which this Stoick Philosopher says he holds from the fortuitous Consent of the popular Voice had it not been better that he had held it from God Cùm de animorum aeternitate disserimus non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum aut timentium inferos aut colentium Vtor hac publica persuasione When we discourse of the Immortality of Souls the consent of Men that either fear or adore the infernal Power is of no small Advantage I make use of this publick Persuasion Now the weakness of human Arguments upon this Subject is particularly manifested by the fabulous Arguments they have superadded as Consequences of this Opinion to find out of what Condition this Immortality of ours was Let us omit the Stoicks
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
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
his Preservation who so much neglects that of his People Whoever will take upon him to maintain that 't is better for a Prince to carry on his Wars by others than in his own Person Fortune will furnish him with Examples enough of those whose Lieutenants have brought great Enterprizes to a happy Issue and of those also whose Presence has done more hurt than good But no virtuous and valiant Prince can with Patience endure so dishonourable Councils under colour of saving his Head like the Statue of a Saint for the Happiness of his Kingdom they degrade him from and declare him incapable of his Office which is Military throughout I know one who had much rather be beaten than to sleep whilst another fights for him and who never without jealousie heard of any brave thing done even by his own Officers in his Absence And Selimus said with very good Reason in my Opinion That Victories obtain'd without the Master were never compleat Much more would he have said that that Master ought to blush for shame to pretend to any share in the Honour having contributed nothing to the work but his Voice and thought nor even so much as those considering that in such work as that the Direction and Command that deserve Honour are only such as are given upon the place and in the heat of the Business No Pilot performs his Office by standing still The Princes of the Ottoman Family the chiefest in the World in Military Fortune have warmly embrac'd this Opinion and Bajazet the second with his Son that swerv'd from it spending their time in Sciences and other retir'd Employments gave great blows to their Empire and Amurath the third now reigning following their Example begins to find the same Was it not Edward the Third King of England who said this of our Charles the Fifth There never was King who so seldom put on his Arms and yet never King who cut me out so much Work He had reason to think it strange as an effect of Chance more than of Reason And let those seek out some other to joyn with them than me who will reckon the Kings of Castile and Portugal amongst the warlike and magnanimous Conquerors because at the distance of twelve hundred Leagues from their lasie abode by the Conduct of their Captains they made themselves Masters of both Indies of whom it would be known if they have but the Courage to go and in Person enjoy them The Emperour Julian said yet further that a Philosopher and a brave man ought not so much as to breathe that is to say not to allow any more to bodily Necessities than what we cannot refuse keeping the Soul and Body still intent and busie about honourable great and virtuous things he was asham'd if any one in publick saw him spit or sweat which is said by some also of the Lacedemonian young men and that Xenophon says of the Persian forasmuch as he conceiv'd that Exercise continual Labour and Sobriety ought to have dried up all those Superfluities What Seneca says will not be unfit for this Place which is that the antient Romans kept their Youth always standing and taught them nothing that they were to learn sitting 'T is a generous desire to wish to dye usefully and like a Man but the Effect lies not so much in our Resolution as good Fortune A thousand have propos'd to themselves in Battel either to overcome or dye who have fail'd both in the one and the other Wounds and Imprisonment crossing their Design and compelling them to live against their Wills There are Diseases that overthrow so much as our Desires and our Knowledge Fortune ought not to second the Vanity of the Roman Legions who bound themselves by Oath either to overcome or dye Victor Marce Fabi revertar ex acie si fallo Jovem patrem Gradivumque Martem aliosque iratos invoco Deos. I will return Marcus Fabius a Conquerour from the Army and if I fail I wish the Indignation of Jove Mars and the other offended Gods may light upon me The Portuguese say that in a certain Place of their Conquest of the Indies they met with Souldiers who had damn'd themselves with horrible Execrations to enter into no other Composition but either to cause themselves to be slain or to remain Victorious and had their Heads and Beards shav'd in token of this Vow 'T is to much purpose for us to hazard our selves and to be obstinate It seems as if blows avoided those that present themselves too briskly to Danger and do not willingly fall upon those who too willingly seek them and so defeat them of their Design Such there have been after having try'd all ways not having been able with all their Endeavour to obtain the Favour of dying by the hand of the Enemy have been constrain'd to make good their Resolution of bringing home the Honour of Victory or of losing their Lives to kill themselves even in the heat of Battel Of which there are other Examples but this is one Philistus General of the naval Army of Dionysius the younger against those of Syracusa presented them Battel which was sharply disputed their Forces being equal In which Engagement he had the better at the first through his own Valour but the Syracusans drawing about his Admiral Gally to environ him after having done great things in his own Person to disengage himself hoping for no relief with his own hand took away that Life he had so liberally and in vain expos'd to the Fury of the Enemy Muley Moluck King of Fez who won the Battel against Sebastian King of Portugal so famous for the Death of three Kings and by the transmission of that great Kingdom to the Crown of Castile was extreamly sick when the Portuguese enter'd in an hostile manner into his Dominions and from that day forward grew worse and worse still drawing nearer to and foreseeing his end Yet never did man better employ his own sufficiency more vigorously and bravely than he did upon this Occasion He found himself too weak to undergo the Pomp and Ceremony of entring into his Camp which after their manner is very Magnificent and therefore resign'd that Honour to his Brother but that was also all of the Office of a General that he resign'd all the rest of greatest Utility and Necessity he most exactly and gloriously performed in his own Person his body lying upon a Couch but his Judgment and Courage upright and firm to his last gasp and in some sort beyond it He might have defeated his Enemy indiscreetly advanc'd into his Dominions without striking a Blow and it was a very unhappy Occurrence that for want of a little Life or some body to substitute in the Conduct of this War and the Affairs of a troubled State he was compell'd to seek a doubtful and bloody Victory having another by a better and surer way already in his hands Notwithstanding he wonderfully manag'd the continuance of his Sickness in
they might have more room and there is scarce two or three little corners of the World that have not felt the effect of such Removals The Romans by this means erected their Colonies for perceiving their City to grow immeasurably populous they eas'd it of the most unnecessary People and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the Lands by them conquer'd sometimes also they purposely maintain'd Wars with some of their Enemies not only to keep their men in action for fear lest Idleness the Mother of Corruption should bring upon them some worse inconvenience Et patimur longae pacis mala saevior armis Luxuria incumbit We suffer th' ills of a long Peace by far Greater and more pernicious than War but also to serve for a Blood-letting to their Republick and a little to evaporate the too vehement heat of their Youth to prune and cleanse the Branches from the Stock too luxuriant in Wood and to this end it was that they formerly maintain'd so long a War with Carthage In the Treaty of Bretigny Edward the third King of England would not in the general Peace he then made with our King comprehend the Controversie about the Dutchy of Brittany that he might have a Place wherein to discharge himself of his Souldiers and that the vast number of English he had brought over to serve him in that Expedition might not return back into England And this also was one reason why our King Philip consented to send his Son John that Foreign Expedition that he might take along with him a great number of hot Young-men that were then in his Pay There are many in our Times who talk at this rate wishing that this hot Emotion that is now amongst us might discharge it self in some neighbouring War for fear lest all the peccant Humours that now reign in this politick Body of ours may not diffuse themselves farther keep the Fever still in the height and at last cause our total Ruin and in truth a Foreign is much more supportable than a Civil War but I do not believe that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel others for our own advantage Nil mihi tam valde placeat Rhamnusia virgo Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris In War that does invade another's right Whose end is plunder I take no delight And yet the weakness of our condition does often push us upon the necessity of making use of ill means to a good end Lycurgus the most vertuous and perfect Legislator that ever was invented this unjust practice of making the Helotes who were there Slaves drunk by force by so doing to teach his People Temperance to the end that the Spartiates seeing them so overwhelmed and buried in Wine might abhor the excess of this beastly Vice And yet they were more too blame who of old gave leave that Criminals to what sort of death soever condemn'd should be cut up alive by the Physicians that they might make a true discovery of our inward parts and build their Art upon greater certainty for if we must run into excesses 't is more excusable to do it for the health of the Soul than that of the Body as the Romans train'd up the People to Valour and the contempt of Dangers and Death by those furious Spectacles of Gladiators and Fencers who being to fight it out to the last cut mangled and killed one another in their Presence Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi Quid mortes juvenum quid sanguine pasta voluptas Of such inhumane sports what further use What Pleasure can slaughters of men produce and this custom continued till the Emperour Theodosius his time Arripe dilatam tua dux in tempora famam Quodque patris superest successor laudis habeto Nullus in Vrbe cadat cujus sit poena Voluptas Jam solis contenta feris infamis arena Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis Prince take the Honours destin'd for thy Reign Inherit of thy Father those remain Henceforth let none at Rome for sport be slain Let beast's Blood stain th' infamous Theater And no more Homicides be acted there It was in truth a wonderful Example and of great advantage for the training up the People to see every day before their Eyes a hundred two hundred nay a thousand couples of Men arm'd against one another cut one another to pieces with so great a constancy of Courage that they were never heard to utter so much as one syllable of Weakness or Commiseration never seen to turn their back nor so much as to make one cowardly step to evade a Blow but rather expose their Necks to the Adversaries Sword and present themselves to receive the stroke And many of them when wounded to Death have sent to ask the Spectators if they were satisfied with their behaviour before they lay down to dye upon the Place It was not enough for them to Fight and to Dye bravely but cheerfully too insomuch that they were hiss'd and curs'd if they made any Dispute about receiving their Death The very Maids themselves set them on consurgit ad ictus Et quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit illa Delicias ait esse suas pectusque jacentis Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi The modest Virgin is delighted so With the fell sport that she applauds the blow And when the Victor baths his bloody brand In 's fellow's Throat and lays him on the sand Then she 's most pleas'd and shews by signs she 'd fain Have him rip up the bosom of the slain The first Romans only condemn'd Criminals to this Example but they have since employ'd innocent Slaves in the work and even Freemen too who sold themselves to this effect nay moreover Senators and Knights of Rome and also Women Nunc caput in mortem vendunt funus arenae Atque hostem sibi quisque parat cum bella quiescunt They sell themselves to death and since the Wars Are ceas'd each for himself a Foe prepares Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri Et pugnat capit improbus viriles Amidst these Tumults and Alarms The tender Sex unskill'd in Arms Immodestly will try their mights And now engag'd in manly Fights which I should think strange and incredible if we were not accustom'd every day to see in our own Wars many thousands of men of other Nations for Money to stake their Blood and their Lives in Quarrels wherein they have no manner of concern CHAP. XXIV Of the Roman Grandeur I will only say a word or two of this infinite Argument to shew the simplicity of those who compare the pittiful Grandeurs of these Times to that of Rome In the seventh Book of Cicero's Familiar Epistles and let the Grammarians put out that sirname of Familiar if they please for in truth it is not very proper and they who in stead of
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
where after having joyfully feasted their Friends and Acquaintance they laid them down with so great Resolution that Fire being apply'd to it they were never seen to stir either Hand or Foot and after this manner one of them Calanus by Name expir'd in the presence of the whole Army of Alexander the Great and he was neither reputed holy nor happy amongst them that did not thus destroy himself dismissing his Soul purg'd and purified by the Fire after having consum'd all that was earthy and mortal This constant premeditation of the whole Life is that which makes the wonder Amongst our other Controversies that of Fatum is also crept in and to tye things to come and even our own Wills to a certain and inevitable Necessity we are yet upon this Argument of time past Since God foresees that all things shall so fall out as doubtless he does it must then necessarily follow that they must so fall out to which our Masters reply that the seeing any thing come to pass as we do and as God himself also does for all things being present with him he rather sees than foresees is not to compell an Event that is we see because things do fall out but things do not fall out because we see Events cause Knowledge but Knowledge does not cause Events That which we see happen does happen but it might have hapned otherwise and God in the Catalogue of the Causes of Events which he has in his Prescience has also those which we call accidental and unvoluntary which depend upon the Liberty he has given our free Will and knows that we do amiss because we would do so I have seen a great many Commanders encourage their Souldiers with this fatal Necessity for if our time be limited to a certain hour neither the Enemies shot nor our own Boldness nor our Flight and Cowardize can either shorten or prolong our Lives This is easily said but see who will be so perswaded and if it be so that a strong and lively Faith draws along with it Actions of the same certainly this Faith we so much brag of is very light in this Age of ours unless the Contempt it has of Works makes it disdain their Company So it is that to this very purpose the Sire de Joinville as credible a Witness as any other whatever tells us of the Bedoins a Nation amongst the Saracens with whom the King St. Lewis had to do in the Holy-land that they in their Religion did so firmly believe the number of every mans days to be from all eternity prefix'd and set down by an inevitable Decree that they went naked to the Wars excepting a Turkish Sword and their Bodies only cover'd with a white Linnen Cloth and for the greatest Curse they could invent when they were angry this was always in their Mouths Accursed be thou as he that arms himself for fear of Death This is a Testimony of Faith very much beyond ours And of this sort is that also that two Religious men of Florence gave in our Fathers days Being engag'd in some Controversie of Learning they agreed to go both of them into the Fire in the sight of all the People each for the verification of his Argument and all things were already prepar'd and the things just upon the point of Execution when it was interrupted by an unexpected accident A young Turkish Lord having perform'd a notable Exploit in his own Person in the sight of both Armies that of Amurath and that of Hunniades ready to joyn Battel being ask'd by Amurath who in so tender and unexperienc'd years for it was his first sally into Arms had inspir'd him with so brave a Courage reply'd that his chief Tutor for Valour was a Hare For being said he one day a hunting I found a Hare sitting and though I had a brace of excellent Grey-hounds with me yet methought it would be best for sureness to make use of my Bow for she sat very fair I then fell to letting fly my Arrows and shot forty that I had in my Quiver not only without hurting but without starting her from her form At last I slipt my Dogs after her but to no more purpose than I had shot by which I understood that she had been secur'd by her Destiny and that neither Darts nor Swords can wound without the permission of Fate which we can neither hasten nor defer This Story which I am going to tell may serve by the way to let us see how flexible our Reason is to all sorts of Images A Person of great Years Name Dignity and Learning boasted to me to have been induc'd to a certain very important mutation in his Faith by a strange whimsical Incitation and otherwise so very ill concluding that I thought it much stronger being taken the contrary way He call'd it a Miracle I look upon it quite otherwise The Turkish Historians say that the perswasion those of their Nation have imprinted in them of the fatal and unalterable Prescription of their Days does manifestly conduce to the giving them great assurance in Dangers and I know a great Prince who makes very fortunate use of it whether it be that he does really believe it or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself provided Fortune be not too soon weary of her Favour to him There has not happened in our memory a more admirable effect of Resolution than in those two who conspir'd the Death of the Prince of Orange 'T is to be wonder'd at how the second that executed it could ever be persuaded into an attempt wherein his Companion who had done his utmost had had so ill Success and after the same Method and with the same Arms to go attaque a Lord arm'd with a late Instruction of distrust powerful in followers and bodily Strength in his own Hall amidst his Guards and in a City wholly at his Devotion He doubtless employ'd a very resolute Arm and a Courage enflam'd with furious Passions A Poignard is surer for striking home but by reason that more motion and force of hand is required than with a Pistol the Blow is more subject to be put by or hindred That this man did not run to a certain Death I make no great doubt for the hopes any one could flatter him withall could not find place in any sober Understanding and the Conduct of his Exploit does sufficiently manifest that he had no want of that no more than of Courage The motives of so powerful a Perswasion may be divers for our fancy does what it will both with it self and us The Execution that was done near Orleans was nothing like this there was in that more of Chance than Vigour the wound was not mortal if Fortune had not made it so and to attempt to shoot on Horse-back and at a great distance and at one whose body was in motion by the moving of his Horse was the attempt of a man
who had rather miss his blow than fail of saving himself as was apparent by what followed after for he was so astonish'd and stupified with the thought of so high an Execution that he totally lost his Judgment both to find his way and to govern his Tongue What needed he to have done more than to fly back to his Friends cross a River 'T is what I have done in less Dangers and that I think of very little hazard how broad soever the River may be provided your Horse have good going in and that you see on the other side easie landing according to the stream The other when they pronounc'd his dreadful Sentence I was prepar'd for this said he before-hand and I will make you wonder at my Patience The Assassins a Nation bordering upon Phaenicia are reputed amongst the Mahometans a People of very great Devotion and purity of Manners They hold that the nearest way to gain Paradise is to kill some one of a contrary Religion which is the Reason they have often been seen being but one or two and without Arms to attempt against powerful Enemies at the price of a certain Death and without any Consideration of their own Danger So was our Count Raimond of Tripoly assassinated which Word is deriv'd from their Name in the heart of his City during our Enterprizes of the Holy War And likewise Conrade Marquis of Montferrat the Murtherers at their Execution carrying themselves with great Pride and Glory that they had perform'd so brave an Exploit CHAP. XXX Of a monstrous Child THis Story shall go by it self for I will leave it to Physicians to Discourse of Two days ago I saw a Child that two Men and a Nurse who said themselves to be the Father the Uncle and the Aunt of it carried about to get money by shewing it by reason it was so strange a Creature It was as to all the rest of a common Form and could stand upon its Feet could go and gabble much like other Children of the same Age it had never as yet taken any other nourishment but from the Nurses Breasts and what in my Presence they tried to put into the Mouth of it it only chew'd a little and spit it out again without swallowing the Cry of it seem'd indeed a little odd and particular and it was just fourteen Months old Under the Breast it was joyned to another Child but without a Head and that had the spine of the Back without motion the rest entire for though it had one Arm shorter than the other it had been broken by accident at their Birth they were joyn'd Breast to Breast and as if a lesser Ghild would reach the Arms about the Neck of one something bigger The juncture and thickness of the place where they were conjoyn'd was not above four Fingers or thereabouts so that if you thrust up the imperfect Child you might see the Navel of the other below it and the joyning was betwixt the Paps and the Navel The Navel of the imperfect Child could not be seen but all the rest of the Belly so that all the rest that was not joyn'd of the imperfect one as Arms Buttocks Thighs and Legs hung dangling upon the other and might reach to the Mid-leg The Nurse moreover told us that it urin'd at both Bodies and also the members of the other were nourish'd sensible and in the same plight with that she gave suck to excepting that they were shorter and less This double Body and several Limbs relating to one Head might be interpreted a favourable Prognostick to the King of maintaining these various Parts of our State under the union of his Laws but lest the Event should prove otherwise 't is better to let it alone for in things already past there needs no Divination Vt quum facta sunt tum ad conjecturam aliqua interpretatione revocantur So as when they are come to pass they should then by some Interpretation be recall'd to Conjecture As 't is said of Epimenides that he always Prophesied of things past I have lately seen a Heards-man in Medoc of about thirty years of Age who has no sign of any Genital Parts he has three holes by which he incessantly voids his Water he is Bearded has desire and covets the society of Women Those that we call Monsters are not so to God who sees in the Immensity of his Work the infinite Forms that he has comprehended therein And it is to be believed that this Figure which does astonish us has relation to some other Figure of the same kind unknown to man From his all Wisdom nothing but good common and regular proceeds but we do not discern the Disposition and Relation Quod crebro videt non miratur etiamsi cur fiat nescit Quod antè non videt id si evenerit ostentum esse censet What he often sees he does not admire though he be ignorant how it comes to pass But when a thing happens he never saw before that he looks upon as a Portent Whatever falls out contrary to Custom we say is contrary to Nature but nothing whatever it be is contrary to her Let therefore this universal and natural Reason expell the Errour and Astonishment that Novelty brings along with it CHAP. XXXI Of Anger PLutarch is admirable throughout but especially where he judges of humane Actions the fine things he says in comparison of Lycurgus and Numa upon the Subject of our great Folly in abandoning Children to the Care and Government of their Fathers are very easily discern'd The most of our Civil Governments as Aristotle says leave after the manner of the Cyclops to every one the ordering of their Wives and Children according to their own foolish and indiscreet Fancy and the Lacedemonian and Cretensian are almost the only Governments that have committed the Education of Children to the Laws And who does not see that in a State all depends upon their nurture and bringing up and yet they are left to the Mercy of Parents let them be as foolish and ill natur'd as they will without any manner of Discretion Amongst other things how oft have I as I have past along the Streets had a good mind to make a farce to revenge the poor Boys whom I have seen flead knock'd down and miserably abus'd by some Father or Mother when in their Fury and mad with Rage You shall see them come out with Fire and Fury sparkling in their Eyes rabie jecur incendente feruntur Praecipites ut saxa jugis abruta quibus mons Subtrahitur clivoque latus pendente recedit With burning Fury they are headlong borne As when great Stones are from the Mountains torn By which the Clifts depriv'd and lessen'd are And their steep sides are naked left and bare and according to Hippocrates the most dangerous Maladies are they that disfigure the Countenance with a roaring and terrible Voice very often against those that are but newly come from Nurse and
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
which wholly reside in the Soul as Ambition Avarice and the rest find the Reason much more to do because it cannot there be relieved but by its own means neither are those Appetites capable of Saciety but grow sharper and encrease by Fruition The sole Example of Julius Caesar may suffize to demonstrate to us the disparity of these Appetites for never was Man more addicted to amorous Delights than he Of which the delicate Care he had of his Person to that degree of Effeminacy as to serve himself with the most lascivious means to that end as to have the Hairs of his Body twitch'd off bye places and farded all over with Perfumes with the extreamest curiosity is one Testimony and he was a Beautiful Person in himself of a fair Complexion tall and spritely full fac'd with quick hazel Eyes if we may believe Suetonius for the Statues that we see at Rome do not in all points answer this Discription Besides his Wives which he four times changed without reckoning the Amours of his Child-hood with Nicomedes King of Bithynia he had the Maidenhead of the Renowned Cleopatra Queen of Aegypt witness the little Caesario that he had by her He also made Love to Eunoe Queen of Mauritania and at Rome to Posthumia the Wife of Servius Sulpitius to Lollia the Wife of Gabinius to Tortulla the Wife of Crassus and even to Mutia Wife to the Great Pompey which was the Reason the Roman Historians say that she was repudiated by her Husband which Plutarch confesses to be more than he knew And the Curios both Father and Son afterwards reproach'd Pompey when he married Caesar's Daughter that he had made himself Son-in-law to a man who had made him Cuckold and one that he himself was wont to call Aegystus Besides all these he entertain'd Servilia Cato's Sister and Mother to Marcus Brutus from whence every one believes the great affection he had to Brutus did proceed by reason that he was born in a time when it was likely he might be his So that I have reason methinks to take him for a man extreamly given to this Debauch and of a very amorous Constitution But the other Passion of Ambition with which he was exceedingly infected arising in him to contend with the former it was soon compell'd to give way And here calling to mind Mahomet who won Constantinople and totally exterminated the Grecian Name I do not know where these two Passions were so evenly balanc'd equally an indefatigable Lecher and Souldier but where they both meet in his Life and justle one another the quarrelling Ardour always gets the better of the amorous Passion And this though it was out of its natural Season never regained an absolute Sovereignty over the other till he was arriv'd at an extream old Age and unable to undergo the Fatigues of War What is related for a contrary Example of Ladislaus King of Naples is very remarkable that being a great Captain Valiant and Ambitious he propos'd to himself for the principal end of his Ambition the execution of his Pleasure and the enjoyment of some rare and excellent Beauty His death seal'd up all the rest for having by a close and tedious Seige reduc'd the City of Florence to so great distress that the Inhabitants were compell'd to Capitulate about surrender he was content to let them alone provided they would deliver up to him a beautiful Maid he had heard of in their City They were forc'd to yield to it and by a private Injury to divert the publick Ruin She was the Daughter of a famous Physician of his time who finding himself involv'd in so foul a Necessity resolv'd upon a high Attempt for as every one was laying to a hand to trick up his Daughter and to adorn her with Ornaments and Jewels to render her more agreable to this new Lover he also gave her a Handkerchief most richly wrought and of an exquisite perfume an Implement they never go without in those Parts which she was to make use of at their first approaches This Handkerchief empoisoned with his chiefest Art comming to be rub'd between the chaf'd Flesh and open Pores both of the one and the other so suddenly infus'd the Poyson that immediately converting their warm into a cold Sweat they presently died in one anothers Arms. But I return to Caesar. His Pleasures never made him steal one minute of an hour nor step one step aside from Occasions that might any way conduce to his Advancement That Passion was so sovereign in him over all the rest and with so absolute authority possest his Soul that it guided him at pleasure In earnest it troubles me when as to every thing else I consider the greatness of this Man and the wonderful Parts wherewith he was endued learn'd to that degree in all sorts of Knowledge that there is hardly any one Science of which he has not written He was so great an Orator that many have prefer'd his Eloquence to that of Cicero and he I conceive did not think himself inferiour to him in that particular for his two Anti-Catos were chiefly writ to counterbalance the Elocution that Cicero had expended in his Cato As to the rest was ever Soul so vigilant so active and so patient of Labour as his and doubtless it was embellish'd with many rare seeds of Virtue I mean innate and natural and not put on He was singularly Sober so far from being delicate in his Diet that Opius relates how that having one day at Table Physical instead of common Oyl in some Sawce set before him he did eat heartily of it that he might not put his Entertainer out of Countenance Another time he caus'd his Baker to be whip'd for serving him with a finer than ordinary sort of Bread Cato himself was wont to say of him that he was the first sober man that ever made it his Business to ruin his Country And as to the same Cato's calling him one day Drunkard it fell out thus Being both of them in the Senate at a time when Catiline's Conspiracy was in Question of which Caesar was suspected one came and brought him a Ticket seal'd up Cato believing that it was something the Conspirators gave him notice of call'd to him to deliver it into his hand which Caesar was constrained to do to avoid farther suspicion It was by fortune a Love-letter that Servilia Cato's Sister had written to him which Cato having read he threw it back to him saying there Drunkard This I say was rather a word of disdain and anger than an express reproach of this Vice as we often rate those that anger us with the first injurious words comes into our Mouths though nothing due to those we are offended at To which may be added that the Vice which Cato cast in his dish is wonderfully near a-kin to that wherein he had trap'd Caesar for Bacchus and Venus according to the Proverb do very willingly agree but with me
employ'd than upon your Stomack One asking a Lacedemonian who had made him live so long he made answer the ignorance of Physick And the Emperour Adrian continually exclaim'd as he was dying that the croud of Physicians had kill'd him An ill Wrestler turn'd Physician Courage says Diogenes to him thou hast done well for now thou wilt throw those who have formerly thrown thee But they have this Advantage according to Nicocles that the Sun gives Light to their Success and the Earth covers their Failures and besides they have a very advantageous way of making use of all sorts of Events for what Fortune Nature or any other Causes of which the number is infinite produces of good and healthful in us it is the Priviledge of Physick to attribute to it self All the happy Successes that happen to the Patient must be deriv'd from thence The Occasions that have cur'd me and thousand others Physicians usurp to themselves and their own Skill and as to ill Accidents they either absolutely disown them in laying the fault upon the Patient by such frivolous and idle Reasons as they can never be to seek for as he lay with his Arms out of Bed or he was disturb'd with the ratling of a Coach Rhedarum transitus arcto Vicorum inflexu He heard the Wheels and Horses trampling Feet In the straight turning of a narrow Street or some body had set open the Casement or he had lain upon his left side or had had some odd Fancies in his Head in sum a Word a Dream or a look seem to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate their own Errors Or if they so please they yet make use of their growing worse and do their Business that way which can never fail them which is by buzzing us in the Ears when the Disease is more inflam'd by their Medicaments that it had been much worse but for those Remedies He who from an ordinary cold they have thrown into a double Tertian-Ague had but for them been in a continued Fever They do not much care what Mischief they do since it turns to their own Profit In earnest they have Reason to require a very favourable belief from their Patients and indeed it ought to be a very easie one to swallow things so hard to be believ'd Plato said very well that Physicians were the only men that might lye at Pleasure since our Health depends upon the Vanity and Falsity of their Promises Aesop a most excellent Author and of whom few men discover all the Graces does pleasantly represent to us the tyrannical Authority Physicians usurp over poor Creatures weakned and subdued hy Sickness and Fear for he tells us that a sick Person being ask'd by his Physician what Operation he found of the Potion he had given him I have sweat very much says the sick man that 's good says the Physician another time having ask'd him him how he felt himself after his Physick I have been very cold and have had a great shivering upon me said he that is good reply'd the Physician After the third Potion he ask'd him again how he did Why I find my self swell'd and puff'd up said he as if I had a Dropsie That is very well said the Physician One of his Servants coming presently after to inquire how he felt himself Truly Friend said he with being too well I am about to dye There was a more just Law in Egypt by which the Physician for the three first days was to take charge of his Patient at the Patients own Peril and Fortune but those three days being past it was to be at his own For what Reason is it that their Patron Aesculapius should be struck with Thunder for restoring Hyppolitus from Death to Life Nam pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae Ipse repertorem medicinae talis artis Flumine Phaebigenam stygias detrusit ad undas For Jupiter offended at the sight Of one he had struck dead restor'd to light He struck the Artist durst it undertake With his fork'd lightning to the Stygian Lake and his followers be pardoned who send so many Souls from Life to Death A Physician boasting to Nicocles that his Art was of great Authority It is so indeed said Nicocles that can with impunity kill so many People As to what remains had I been of their Counsel I would have render'd my Discipline more sacred and mysterious they had begun well but they have not ended so It was a good beginning to make Gods and Daemons the Authors of their Science and to have us'd a peculiar way of speaking and writing And notwithstanding that Philosophy concludes it folly to persuade a man to his own good by an unintelligible way Vt si quis medicus imperet ut sumat Terrigenam herbigradam domiportam sanguine cassam as if a Physician should command his Patient to take Snails by unknown Names and Epithets It was a good Rule in their Art and that accompanies all other vain fantastick and supernatural Arts that the Patients belief should prepossess them with good hope and assurance of their effects and operation A Rule they hold to that degree as to maintain that the most inexpert and ignorant Physician is more proper for a Patient that has confidence in him than the most learned and experienc'd that he is not acquainted with Nay even the very choice of most of their Drugs is in some sort mysterious and divine The left foot of a Tortoise the Urine of a Lizard the Dung of an Elephant the Liver of a Mole Blood drawn from under the Wing of a white Pidgeon and for us who have the Stone so scornfully they use us in our Miseries the Excrement of Rats beaten to Powder and such like trash and fooleries which rather carry a face of Magical Enchantment than any solid Science I omit the odd number of their Pills the appointment of certain days and feasts of the year the Superstition of gathering their Simples at certain hours and that austere grim Countenance and haughty carriage which Pliny himself so much derides But they have as I said fail'd in that they have not added to this fine beginning the making their Meetings and Consultations more religious and secret where no profane Person ought to have been admitted no more than in the secret Ceremonies of Aesculapius For by Reason of this it falls out that their irresolution the weakness of their Arguments Divination and Foundations the sharpness of their Disputes full of hatred jealousie and particular interest coming to be discover'd by every one a man must be very blind not to discern that he runs a very great hazard in their Hands Who ever saw one Physician approve of anothers Prescription without taking something away or adding something to it By which they sufficiently betray their Art and make it manifest to us that they therein more consider their own Reputation and
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
it into several Desires of which let one be regent if you will over the rest but lest it should tyrannize and domineer over you weaken and protract in dividing and diverting it Cum morosa vago singultiet inguine venae Conjicito humorem collectum in Corpora quaeque and look to 't in time lest it proves too troublesome to deal with when it has once seiz'd you Si non prima novis conturbes vulvera plagis Volgivagaque vagus venere ante recentia cures Unless you fancy every one you view Revel in Love and cure old Wounds by new I was once wounded with a vehement Displeasure and withal more just than vehement I might peradventure have lost my self in it if I had merely trusted to my own Strength Having need of a powerful Diversion to disengage me by amorous Art and Study wherein I was assisted by my Youth I found one out Love reliev'd and rescu'd me from the evil wherein Friendship had engag'd me 'T is in every thing else the same a violent Imagination hath seiz'd me I find it a nearer way to change than to subdue it I depute if not one contrary yet another at least in its place Variation does always relieve dissolve and dissipate if I am not able to contend with it I escape from it and in avoiding it slip out of the way and make my doubles shifting of Place Business and Company I secure my self in the crowd of other Thoughts and Fancies where it loses my trace and I escape After the same manner does Nature proceed by the benefit of Inconstancy for the time she has given us for the sovereign Physician of our Passions does chiefly work by that that supplying our Imaginations with other and new Affairs it un-nerves and dissolves the first apprehension how strong soever A wise man sees his Friend little less dying at the end of five and twenty years than the first year and according to Epicurus no less at all for he did not attribute any alleviation of Afflictions neither to the foresight of the man or the Antiquity of the Evils themselves But so many other thoughts traverse the first that it languishes and tires at last Alcibiades to divert the Inclination of common Rumours cut off the Ears and Tail of his beautiful Dog and turn'd him out into the publick place to the end that giving the People this occasion to prate they might let his other Actions alone I have also seen for this same end of diverting the Opinions and Conjectures of the People and to stop their Mouths some Women conceal their real Affections by those that were only counterfeit and put on to blind mens Eyes but some of them withall who in counterfeiting have suffer'd themselves to be caught indeed and who have quitted the true and original Affection for the feign'd and by them have found that they who find their Affections well plac'd are Fools to consent to this disguise The favourable and publick reception being only reserv'd for this pretended Servant a man may conclude him a Fellow of very little address and less Wit if he does not in the end put himself into your place and you into his this is properly to cut out and make up a Shooe for another to draw on A little thing will turn and divert us because a little thing holds us We do not much consider Subjects in gross and single in themselves but they are little and superficial Circumstances that wound us and the outward useless rinds that pill off those Subjects Folliculos ut nunc teretes aestate cicadae Linquunt Such as the terous husks or shells we find In Summer Grashoppers do leave behind Even Plutarch himself laments his Daughter for the little apish tricks of her Infancy The remembrance of a Farewel of the particular grace of an Action of a last recommendation afflicts us The sight of Caesar's Robe troubled all Rome which was more than his death had done Even the sound of Names ringing in our ears as my poor Master my faithful Friend Alas my dear Father or my sweet Daughter afflict us When these Repetitions torment me and that I examin it a little nearer I find 't is no other but a Grammatical complaint I am only wounded with the word and tone as the Exclamations of Preachers do very oft work more upon their Auditory than their Reasons and as the pitiful eyes of a Beast kill'd for Service without my weighing or penetrating in the interim into the true and real essence of my Subject His se stimulis dolor ipse lacessit With these incitements grief it self provokes These are the foundations of our mourning The obstinacy of my Stone to all remedies especially those in my Bladder has sometimes thrown me into so long suppressions of Urine for three or four days together and so near death that it had been folly to have hop'd to evade it and it was much rather to have been desir'd considering the miseries I endure in those cruel Fits Oh that the good Emperour who caus'd Criminals to be ty'd that they might dye for want of pissing was a great Master in the Hangman 's Science Finding my self in this condition I consider'd by how many light causes and objects Imagination nourish'd in me the regret of Life and of what Atoms the weight and difficulty of this dislodging was compos'd in my Soul and to how many idle and frivolous thoughts we give way in so great an Affair A Dog a Horse a Book a Glass and what not were consider'd in my loss To others their ambitious hopes their money their knowledge not less foolish Considerations in my opinion than mine I look upon Death carelesly when I look upon it universally as the end of Life I insult over it in gross but in retail it domineers over me The Tears of a Foot-man the disposing of my Cloaths the touch of a friendly hand which is a common Consolation discourages and entenerates me So do the Complaints in Tragedies infect our Souls with Grief and the Regrets of Dido and Ariadne impassionate even those who believe them not in Virgil and Catullus 'T is a simptom of an obstinate and obdurate Nature to be sensible of no emotion as 't is reported for a Miracle of Polemon who not so much as alter'd his Countenance at the biting of a mad-Dog who tore away the Calf of his Leg. And no Wisdom proceeds so far as to conceive so lively and entire a cause of Sorrow by Judgment that it does not suffer an increase by presence where the Eyes and Ears have their share parts that are not to be moved but by vain accidents Is it reason that even the Arts themselves should make an advantage of our natural brutality and weakness An Orator says Rhetorick in the farce of his pleading shall be mov'd with the sound of his own Voice and feign'd Emotions and suffer himself to be impos'd upon by the passion
fell to making open love to own her Servants and to favour and entertain them in the sight of all She would make him know and see how she us'd him This Animal not to be rous'd with all this and rendring her Pleasures dull and flat by his too stupid Facility by which he seem'd to authorize and make them lawful what does she but being the Wife of a living and healthful Emperour and at Rome the Theater of the World in the face of the Sun and with solemn Ceremony and to Silius who had long before enjoy'd her she publickly marries her self one day that her Husband was gone out of the City Does it not seem as if she was going to become Chaste by her Husband's negligence or that she sought another Husband that might sharpen her appetite by his jealousie and who by watching should incite her But the first difficulty she met with was also the last this Beast suddenly rous'd These stupid sort of Men are oft the most dangerous I have found by Experience that this extream Toleration when it comes to dissolve produces the most severe Revenge for taking fire on a sudden Anger and Fury being combin'd in one discharge their utmost force at the first charge Irarumque omnes effundit habenas He put her to death and with her a great number of those with whom she had had Intelligence even those who could not help it and whom she had caus'd to be forc'd to her Bed with Scourges What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan Lucretius had better express'd of a stoln Injoyment betwixt her and Mars bellifera maenera Mavors Armipotens regit in gremium qui saepe tuum se Rejicit aeterno devinctus Vulnere amoris Pascit amore avidos inhians in te Dea visus Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ores Hunc tu Diva tuo recubantem corpore sancto Circumfusa super suaveis ex ore loquelas Funde For furious Mars The only Governour and God of Wars Tired with heat and toil doth oft resort To taste the Pleasures of the Paphian Court Where on thy Bosom he supinely lies And greedily drinks Love at both his eyes Till quite o're-come snatching an eager Kiss He hastily goes on to greater bliss Then midst his strict embraces clasp thine arms About his Neck and call forth all thy charms Careless with all thy subtle arts become A Flatterer and beg a Peace for Rome When I consider this rejicit pascit inhians molli fovet medullas labefacta pendet percurrit and that noble circumfusa mother of the gentle infusus I contemn those little Quibbles and verbal Allusions have been since in use Those well-meaning People stood in need of no subtilty to disguise their meaning their Language is downright and plain and full of natural and continued Vigour they are all Epigram not only with a sting in the tayl but the head body and feet carry the same force throughout There is nothing forc'd nothing languishing but they still keep the same pace Contextus totus virilis est non sunt circa flosculos occupati The whole contexture is manly without insisting upon little flowers of Rhetorick 'T is not a soft Eloquence and without offence only 't is nervous and solid that does not so much please as it fits and ravishes the greatest minds When I see these brave methods of expression so lively so profound I do not say that 't is well said but well thought 'T is the spriteliness of the imagination that swells and elevates words Pectus est quod disertum facit Our People call Language Judgment and fine words full Conceptions This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having the object more lively imprinted in the Soul Gallus speaks simply because he conceives simply Horace does not content himself with a superficial expression that would betray him he sees farther and more clearly into things his Wit breaks into and rummages all the magazine of words and figures wherewith to express himself and he must have them above ordinary because his Conception is so Plutarch says that he sees the Latin Tongue by the things 'T is here the same the Sense illuminates and produces the words no more words of air but of flesh and bone they signifie more than they express Moreover those who are not well skill'd in a Language perceive some image of this for in Italy I said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse but in more serious subjects I durst not have trusted my self with an Idiome that I could not wind and turn out of its ordinary pace I would therein have a power of introducing something of my own The handling and utterance of fine Wits is that which sets off a Language not so much by innovating it as by putting it to more vigorous and various service and by straining bending and adapting it to them They do not create words but they enrich their own and give them weight and signification by the Uses they put them to and teach them unwonted motions but withall ingeniously and discreetly And how little this talent is given to all is manifest by the many French Scriblers of this Age. They are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road but want of Invention and discretion ruins them There is nothing seen in their Writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style with cold and absurd disguises which instead of elevating depress the matter Provided they can but trick up their style with fine new words they care not what they signifie and to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders they leave the old one very often more sinewy and significant than the other There is stuff enough in our Language but there is a defect in cutting out For there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of Hunting and War which is a fruitful Soil to borrow from And the forms of speaking like Herbs improve and grow stronger by being transplanted I find it sufficiently abounding but not sufficiently pliable and vigorous It quails under a powerful Conception If you would maintain the dignity of your style you will oft perceive it to flag and languish under you and there Latin steps in to its relief as Greek does to other Languages Of some of the words I have pick'd out for my own use we do not easily discern the energy by reason that the frequent use of them have in some sort embas'd their beauty and rendred it common As in our ordinary Language there are several excellent Phrases and Metaphors to be met with of which the beauty is wither'd by age and the colour is sullied by too common handling but that takes nothing from the relish to an understanding man neither does it derogate from the glory of those ancient Authors who 't is likely first brought those words into that lustre The Sciences treat of things too
Wishes as much Liberty and Indiscretion but yet it never befell me to wish for either Empire or Royalty for the Eminency of those high and commanding Fortunes I do not aim that way I love my self too well When I think to grow greater 't is but very moderately and by a compell'd and timorous Advancement such as is proper for me in Resolution in Prudence in Health in Beauty and even in Riches too But this supream Reputation and this mighty Authority oppress my Imagination And quite contrary to some others I should peradventure rather choose to be the second or third in Perigourd than the first at Paris at least without lying the third than the first at Paris I would neither dispute a miserable unknown with a Noble-man's Porter nor make Crowds open in Adoration as I pass I am train'd up to a moderate Condition as well by my choice as Fortune and have made it appear in the whole Conduct of my Life and Enterprizes that I have rather avoided than otherwise the climbing above the degree of Fortune wherein God has plac'd me by my Birth all natural Constitution is equally just and easie My Soul is so sneaking and mean that I measure not good Fortune by the height but by the Facility But if my Heart be not great enough 't is open enough to make amends at any ones request freely to lay open its Weakness Should any one put me upon comparing the Life of L. Thorius Balbus a brave man handsom learned healthful understanding and abounding in all sorts of Conveniencies and Pleasures leading a quiet Life and all his own his Mind well prepar'd against Death Superstition Pains and other Incumbrances of humane Necessity dying at last in Battel with his Sword in his Hand for the defence of his Country on the one part and on the other part the Life of M. Regulus so great and high as is known to every one and his end admirable the one without Name and without Dignity the other exemplary and glorious to wonder I should doubtless say as Cicero did could I speak as well as he But if I was to touch it in my own Phrase I should then also say that the first is as much according to my Capacity and Desire which I conform to my Capacity as the second is far beyond it that I could not approach the last but with Veneration the other I would willingly attain by Custom But let us return to our temporal Greatness from which we are digress'd I disrelish all Dominion whether active or passive Otanes one of the seven who had right to pretend to the Kingdom of Persia did as I should willingly have done which was that he gave up to his Concurrents his right of being promoted to it either by Election or by Lot provided that he and his might live in the Empire out of all Authority and Subjection those of the ancient Laws excepted and might injoy all liberty that was not prejudicial to them as impatient of commanding as of being commanded The most painful and difficult Employment in the World in my Opinion is worthily to discharge the Office of a King I excuse more of their mistakes than men commonly do in consideration of the intolerable weight of their Function which does astonish me 'T is hard to keep measure in so immeasurable a Power Yet so it is that it is to those who are not the best natur'd men a singular incitement to Virtue to be seated in a place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon Record and where the least benefit redounds to so many men and where your Talent of Administration like that of Preachers does principally address it self to the People no very exact Judge easie to deceive and easily content There are few things wherein we can give a sincere Judgement by reason that there are few wherein we have not in some sort a particular Interest Superiority and Inferiority Dominion and Subjection are bound to a natural Envy and Contest and must necessarily perpetually intrench upon one another I neither believe the one nor the other touching the rights of the adverse Party let Reason therefore which is inflexible and without Passion determine 'T is not above a Month ago that I read over two Scoth Authors contending upon this Subject of which he who stands for the People makes Kings to be in a worse Condition than a Carter and he who writes for Monarchy places him some degrees above God-Almighty in Power and Sovereignty Now the Inconveniency of Greatness that I have made choice of to consider in this place upon some occasion that has lately put it into my head is this There is not peradventure any thing more pleasant in the Commerce of men than the Tryals that we make against one another out of Emulation of Honour and Valour whether in the Exercises of the Body or in those of the Mind wherein the Sovereign Greatness can have no true part And in earnest I have often thought that out of force of respect men have us'd Princes disdainfully and injuriously in that particular For the thing I was infinitely offended at in my Child-hood that they who exerciz'd with me forbore to do their best because they found me unworthy of their utmost endeavour is what we see happen to them every day every one finding himself unworthy to contend with them If we discover that they have the least Passion to have the better there is no one who will not make it his Business to give it them and who will not rather betray his own Glory than offend theirs and will therein employ so much force only as is necessary to advance their Honour What share have they then in the Engagement wherein every one is on their side Methinks I see those Paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to Justs with enchanted Arms and Bodies Brisson running against Alexander purposely mist his blow and made a fault in his Career Alexander chid him for it but he ought to have had him whipt Upon this consideration Carneades said that the Sons of Princes learn'd nothing right but to ride the great Horse by reason that in all their Exercises every one bends and yields to them but a Horse that is neither a Flatterer nor a Courtier throws the Son of a King with no more remorse than he would do that of a Porter Homer was compell'd to consent that Venus so sweet and delicate as she was should be wounded at the Battel of Troy thereby to ascribe Courage and Boldness to her Qualities that cannot possibly be in those who are exempt from Danger The Gods are made to be angry to fear to run away to be jealous to grieve and to be transported with Passions to honour them with the Virtues that amongst us are built upon these Imperfections Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty can pretend no interest in the Honour
I durst not so much as one day deferr it And if nothing be done 't is as much as to say either that doubt hinder'd my choice and sometimes 't is well chosen not to choose or that I was positively resolv'd not to do any thing at all I write my Book to few men and to few years Had it been matter of duration I should have put it into a better Language for according to the continual variation that ours has been continually subject to who can expect that the present force should be in use fifty years hence It slips every day thorough our Fingers and since I was born is alter'd above one half We say that it is now perfect and every Age says the same of the Language then spoken But I shall hardly trust to that so long as it varies and changes as it does 'T is for good and usefull Writings to nail and rivet it to them and its Reputation will go according to the Fortune of our State For which Reason I am not afraid to insert in it several private Articles which will spend their use amongst the men that are now living and that concern the particular knowledge of some who will see further into them than every common Reader I will not after all as I oft hear dead men spoken of that men should say of me He judg'd and liv'd so and so he would have done this or that could he have spoke when he was dying he would have said so or so and have given this thing or t'other I knew him better than any Now as much as Decency permits I here discover my Inclinations and Affections but I do it more willingly and freely by word of Mouth to any one who desires to be inform'd So it is that in these Memoires if any one observe he will find that I have either told or design'd to tell all What I cannot express I point out with my Finger Verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci Sunt per quae possis cognoscere caetera tute But by these foot-steps a sagacious mind May easily all other Matters find I leave nothing to be desir'd or to be ghess'd at concerning me If People must be talking of me I would have it to be justly and truly I would come again with all my Heart from the other World to give any one the lye that should report me other than I was though he did it to honour me I perceive that People represent even living men quite another thing than what they really are and had I not stoutly defended a Friend whom I have lost they would have torn him into a thousand several pieces To conclude the account of my frail Humours I do confess that in my Travel I seldom come to my Inn but that it comes into my Mind to consider whether I could there be sick and dying at my ease I would be lodg'd in some convenient part of the House remote from all noise ill scents and smoke I endeavour to flatter Death by these frivolous Circumstances or to say better to discharge my self from all other Incumbrances that I may have nothing to do nor be troubled with any thing but it which will lye heavy enough upon me without the assistance of any other thing to mend the Load I would have my Death share in the ease and conveniencies of my Life 't is a great part of it and of the greatest importance and hope it will not for the future contradict what is past Death has some forms that are more easie than others and receives divers Qualities according to every ones Fancy Amongst the natural ones those that proceed from Weakness and Stupidity I think the most favourable amongst those that are violent I can worse endure to think of a precipice than the fall of a House that will crush me flat in a moment and a wound with a Sword than a Harquebuss shot and should rather have chosen to poyson my self with Socrates then stab my self with Cato And though it be the same thing yet my Imagination makes as great a difference as betwixt Death and Life betwixt throwing my self into a burning Furnace and plunging into the Channel of a River So idely does our Fear more concern it self in the Means than the Effect It is but an instant 't is true but withall an instant of such weight that I would willingly give a great many days of my Life to pass it over after my own fashion Since every ones Imagination renders it more or less terrible and since every one has some choice amongst the several forms of dying let us try a little further to find some one that is wholly clear from all Offence Might not one render it moreover Voluptuous as they did who died with Anthony and Cleopatra I set aside the brave and exemplary efforts produc'd by Philosophy and Religion But amongst men of little mark such as Petronius and a Tigillinus at Rome there have been found men condemn'd to dispatch themselves who have as it were rock'd Death asleep with the delicacy of their Preparations They have made it slip and steal away even in the height of their accustomed Diversions Amongst Whores and good Fellows not a word of Consolation no mention of making a Will no ambitious affectation of Constancy no talk of their future Condition amongst Sports Feastings Wit and Mirth common and indifferent Discourses Musick and amorous Verses Were it not possible for us to imitate this Resolution after a more decent manner Since there are Deaths that are fit for fools and fit for the wise let us find out such as are fit for those who are betwixt both My Imagination suggests to me one that is easie and since we must dye to be desir'd The Roman Tyrants thought they did in a manner give a Criminal Life when they gave him the choice of his Death But was not Theophrastus that so delicate so modest and so wise a Philosopher compell'd by Reason when he durst repeat this Verse-translated by Cicero Vitam regit Fortuna non Sapientia Fortune not Wisdom humane Life doth sway Fortune is assisting to the Facility of the bargain of my Life having plac'd it in such a condition that for the future it can be no advantage nor hindrance to those that are concern'd in me 'T is a Condition that I would have accepted at any time of my Age but in this occasion of trussing up my Baggage I am particularly pleas'd that in dying I shall neither do them good nor harm she has so order'd it by a cunning Compensation that they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will at the same time sustain a material Inconvenience Death sometimes is more grievous to us in that it is grievous to others and interests us in their interest as much as in our own and sometimes more In this Conveniency of lodging that I desire I mix nothing of Pomp and Splendor I
then a Talent said the other that is not a Present befitting a Cynick Seu plures calor ille vias caeca relaxat Spiramenta novas veniat qua succus in herbas Seu durat magis venas astringit hiantes Ne tenues pluviae rapidive potentia solis Acrior aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat Whether from this new force and nourishment The Earth receives or else all venom spent By fire and froth superfluous moisture sweat Or many dark hid breathings lax'd by heat By which fresh sap the springing Corn sustains Or more condens'd it binds the gaping Veins Lest soaking show'rs or Sol's more potent Beam Or Boreas piercing cold should wither them Ogni medaglia ha il suo reverso Every Medal has its reserve This is the reason why Clitomucus said of old that Carneades had out-done the Labours of Hercules in having fixt the consent of men that is to say their Opinion and the Liberty of judging This so strong fancy of Carneades sprung in my Opinion anciently from the impudence of those who made Profession of Knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit Esop was set to sale with two other Slaves the buyer ask'd the first what he could do who to enhance his own value promis'd Mountains and Miracles saying he could do this and that and I know not what the second as much of himself and more when it came to Esop's turn and that he was also ask'd what he could do nothing said he for these two have taken up all before me they can do every thing So has it hapned in the School of Philosophy The pride of those who attributed the Capacity of all things to humane Wit created in others out of spite and Emulation this Opinion that it is capable of nothing The one maintain the same extream in Ignorance that the others do in Knowledge To make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate throughout can give no other positive sentence but that of Necessity and the want of Ability to proceed further CHAP. XII Of Physiognomy ALmost all the Opinions we have are deriv'd from Authority and taken upon trust and 't is not amiss We could not choose worse than by our selves in so weak an Age. This Image of Socrates his Discourses which his Friends have transmitted to us we approve upon no other account but merely the reverence to publick Approbation 'T is not according to our own knowledge they are not after our way If any thing of this kind should spring up new few men would value them We discern not the graces otherwise than by certain features touch'd up and illustrated by Art Such as glide on in their own Purity and Simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours they have a delicate and conceal'd Beauty such as requir'd a clear and purified sight to discover so secret a light Is not Simplicity as we accept it Cosin-german to Folly and a Quality of reproach Socrates makes his Soul move a natural and common motion A country Peasant said this a Woman said that he has never any thing in his Mouth but Carters Joiners Coblers and Masons These are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common and known Actions of men every one understands them We should never have entertain'd the Nobility and Splendor of his admirable Conceptions under so vile a form we I say who think all things low and flat that are not elevated by Learning and who discern no riches but in pomp and shew This World of ours is only form'd for Ostentation Men are only puffd up with Wind and are bandied too and fro like Tennis-Balls This man proposes to himself no vain and idle Fancies his design was to furnish us with Precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use of Life servare modum finemque tenere Naturamque sequi To keep a mean his end still to observe And from the Laws of Nature ne're to swerve He was also always one and the same and rais'd himself not by starts but by complexion to the highest pitch of vigour or to say better he exalted nothing but rather brought down and reduc'd all asperities and difficulties to their original and natural Condition and subjected their power for in Cato 't is most manifest that there is a proceeding extended far beyond the common ways of ordinary men In the brave exploits of his Life and in his Death we find him always mounted upon his manag'd Horses Whereas this man always creeps upon the ground and with a slow and ordinary pace treats of the most usefull Discourses and bears himself through both at his Death and the nicest traverses that would present themselves in the course of humane Life It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be presented to the World for Example should be he of whom we have the most certain knowledge he has been pry'd into by the most clear-sighted men that ever were The Testimonies we have of him are admirable both in Fidelity and Knowledge 'T is a great thing that he was able so to order the pure Imaginations of a Child that without altering or wresting them he has thereby produc'd the most beautiful effects of a humane Soul He presents it not either elevated or rich he only represents it sound but certainly with a brisk and spritely Health By these common and natural Springs by these vulgar and ordinary Fancies without being mov'd or making any bustle in the Businesâ— he set up not only the most regular but the most high and vigorous Beliefs Actions and Manners that ever were 'T is he who brought again from Heaven where she lost her time humane Wisdom to restore her to man wherein her most just and greatest business lies See him plead before his Judges do but obserâ—e by what reasons he rouzes his Courage to the hazards of War with what Arguments he fortifies his Patience against Calumny Tyranny Death and the perverseness of his Wife you will find nothing in all this borrow'd from Arts and Sciences The simplest may there discover their own means and power 't is not possible more to retire or to creep more low He has done humane Nature a great kindness in shewing it how much it can do of it self We are all of us richer than we think we are but we are taught to borrow and to beg and brought up more to make use of what is anothers than our own Man can in nothing fix and conform himself to his meer Necessity Of Pleasure Wealth and Power he grasps at more than he can hold his greediness is incapable of moderation And I find that in curiositioy of knowing he is the same â—e cuts himself out more work than he can do and more than he needs to do Extending the utitility of knowledge as far as the matter Vt omnium rerum sic literarum quoque intemperantiâ— laboramus That as of every thing else
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
evidence against my self not to believe them as I ought mistrusting their Conduct and not purely committing my Affair into their hands I do wholly rely upon them and hold my self assur'd they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you and me Good men whether living or dead have no reason to fear the Gods Is not this an innocent childish pleading of an immaginable loftiness and in what a necessity imploy'd In earnest he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great Orator Lysias had penn'd for him admirably couch'd indeed in the judiciary style but unworthy of so noble a Criminal Had a suppliant voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates that lofty Virtue had struck sail in the height of its glory And ought his rich and powerful nature to have committed her defence to Art and in her highest proof have renounc'd truth and simplicity the ornaments of his speaking to adorn and deck it self with the Embellishments of figures and equivocations of a premeditated Speech He did very wisely and like himself not to corrupt the tenure of an incorrupt Life and so sacred an image of humane form to spin out his Decrepitude the poor eeching of a year and to betray the immortal memory of that glorious end He ow'd his Life not to himself but to the Example of the World Had it not been a publick dammage that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner Doubtless that careless and indifferent consideration of his Death very well deserves that Posterity should consider him so much the more as they also did And there is nothing so just in Justice than that which Fortune ordain'd for his recommendation For the Athenians abominated all those who had been causers of his death to such a degree that they avoided them as excommunicated Persons and look'd upon every thing as polluted that had been touch'd by them no one would wash with them in the publick Baths none would salute or own acquaintance with them so that at last unable longer to support this publick hatred they hang'd themselves If any one shall think that amongst so many other Examples that I had to chuse out of in the Sayings of Socrates for my present purpose I have made an ill choice of this and shall judge that this Discourse is elevated above common Conceit I must tell them that I have purposely done it for I am of another opinion and do hold it a Discourse in rank and simplicity much behind and inferiour to common contrivance He represents in an inartificial boldness and infantive security the pure and first impression and ignorance of Nature For it is to be believ'd that we have naturally a fear of Pain but not of Death by reason of it self 'T is a part of our Being and no less essential than Living To what end should Nature have begot in us a hatred to it and a horror of it considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining the Succession and Vicissitude of her Works And that in this universal Republick it conduces more to truth and augmentation than to loss or ruine sic rerum summa novatur Mille animus una necata dedit The failing of one Life is the passage to a thousand other Lives Nature has imprinted in Beasts the care of themselves and of their conservation Nay they proceed so far as to be timorous of being worse of hitting or hurting themselves and of our halâ—ering and beating them accidents which are subject to their sense and experience but that we should kill them they cannot fear nor have not the faculty to imagine and conclude such a thing as Death Yet it is said that we see them not only cheerfully undergo it Horses for the most part neighing and Swans singing when they dye but moreover seek it at need of which Elephants have given many Examples But besides all this is not the way of arguing which Socrates here makes use of equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence Really it is much more easie to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speak and live as Socrates did There lies the extream degree of perfection and difficulty Art cannot reach it Now our Faculties are not so train'd up We do not try we do not know them we invest our selves with those of others and let our own lye idle As some one may say of me that I have here only made a Nosegay of cull'd Flowers and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them In earnest I have so far yielded to the publick Opinion that those borrow'd Ornaments do accompany me but I do not think that they totally cover and hide me that is quite contrary to my design who desire to make a shew of nothing but what is my own and what is my own by Nature and had I taken my own advice I had at all adventures spoken purely alone I daily more and more load my self every day beyond my purpose and first Method upon the account of Idleness and the humour of the Age. If it misbecome me as I believe it does 't is no matter it may be of use to some other Such there are who quote Plato and Homer who never saw either of them and I also have taken out of places far enough distant from their Source Without pains and without Learning having a thousand Volumes about me in the place where I write I can presently borrow if I please from a dozen such Scrap-gatherers as I am Authors that I do not much trouble my self withall wherewith to embellish this Treatise of Physiognomy There needs no more but a praeliminary Epistle of the German cut to stuff me with proofs and we by that means go a begging for a fading Glory and a cheating the sottish World These Rhapsodies of Common Places wherewith so many furnish their Studies are of little use but to common Subjects and serve but to shew and not to direct us a ridiculous fruit of Learning that Socrates does so pleasantly canvase against Euthidemus I have seen Books made of things that were never either studied or understood the Author committing to several of his learned Friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compile it contenting himself for his share to have projected the Design and by his industry to have ty'd together this Fagot of unknown Provisions the Ink and Paper at least are his This is to buy or borrow a Book and not to make one 't is to shew men not that a man can make a Book but that whereof they may be in doubt that he cannot make one A President in my hearing boasted that he had clutter'd two hundred and odd common places in one of his Judgments in telling which he depriv'd himself of the Glory that had been attributed to him In my Opinion a pusillanimous and absurd Vanity for such a Subject and
such a Person I do quite contrary and amongst so many borrow'd things am glad if I can steal one disguising and altering it for some new service at the hazard of having it said that 't is for want of understanding its natural use I give it some particular address of my own hand to the end it may not be so absolutely strange These set their thefts to shew and value themselves upon them And also they have more credit with the Laws than with me We Naturalists think that there is a great and incomparable preference in the honour of Invention to that of Quotation If I would have spoke by Learning I had spoke sooner I had writ in a time nearer to my Studies when I had more Wit and better Memory and would sooner have trusted to the vigour of that Age than this would I have profess'd Writing And what if this gracious Favour which Fortune has lately offer'd me upon the account of this work had befall'n me in such a time of my Life instead of this wherein 't is equally desirable to possess and ready to lose Two of my Acquaintance great men in this faculty have in my Opinion lost half in refusing to publish at forty years old that they might stay till threescore Maturity has its defects as well as verdure and worse and old age is as unfit for this kind of business as any other Who commits his Decrepitude to the Press plays the fool if he think to squeeze any thing out thence that does not relish of Dotage and Stupidity Our Wits grow costive and thick in growing old I deliver my Ignorance in pomp and state and my Learning meagerly and poorly this accidentally and accessorily that principally and expresly and write purposely of nothing but nothing nor of any Science but that of Inscience I have chosen a time when my Life which I am to give an account of lies wholly before me what remains holds more of Death And of my death only should I find it a prating death as others do I would moreover give an account at my departure Socrates was a perfect Exemplar in all great Qualities and I am vext that he had so deform'd a Body as is said and so unsuitable to the Beauty of his Soul himself being so amorous and such an admirer of Beauty Nature surely did him wrong There is nothing more likely than a conformity and relation of the Body to the Soul Ipsi animi magni refert quali in corpore locati sint multi enim è corpore exâ—stunt quae acuunt montem multa quae obtundant It is of great consequence in what Bodies Souls are plac'd for many things spring from the Body that sharpen the Mind and many that blunt and dull it This speaks of an unnatural ugliness and deformity of Limbs but we call that ill-favour'dness also an unseemliness at first sight which is principally lodg'd in the Face and distasts us by the Complexion a Spot a rude Countenance sometimes from some inexplicable cause in members nevertheless of good simmetry and perfect The Deformity that cloth'd a very beautiful Soul in Boetia was of this Predicament That superficial ugliness which nevertheless is always the most imperious is of least prejudice to the state of the Mind and of little certainty in the Opinion of men The other which by a more proper name is call'd a more substantial Deformity strikes deeper in Not every Shooe of smooth sliming Leather but every Shooe neatly made shews the interior shape of the Foot As Socrates said of his that it accus'd just so much in his Soul had he not corrected it by institution but in saying so I believe he did but scoff as his Custom was and never so excellent a Soul made it self I cannot oft enough repeat how great an esteem I have for Beauty that potent and advantageous Quality He call'd it a short Tyranny and Plato the Priviledge of Nature We have nothing that excells it in Reputation it has the first place in the commerce of men it presents it self to meet 〈◊〉 seduces and prepossesses our Judgments with great Authority and wonderful Impression Phrâ—ne had lost her Cause in the hands of an excellent Advocate if opening her Robe she had not corrupted her Judges by the lustre of her Beauty And I find that Cyrus Alexanâ—nder and Caesar the three Masters of the World never neglected Beauty in their greatest Affairs no more did the first Scipio The same word in Greek signifies both fair and good and the Holy-Ghost oft calls those good whom he means fair I should willingly maintain the priority in things call'd goods according to the Song which Plato calls an idle thing taken out of some of the ancient Poets of Health Beauty and Riches Aristotle says that the right of Command appertains to the beautiful and when there is a Person whose Beauty comes near the Images of the Gods that then Veneration is likewise due To him who askt him why People ofter and longer frequented the company of handsome Persons That Question said he is not to be askt by any but one that is blind The most and the greateâ—â— Philosophers paid for their schooling and acquired Wisdom by the Favour and Mediatioâ— Beauty Not only in the men that serve me but also in the Beasts I consider them within two fingers breadth of Goodness And yet I fancy that those Features and Moulds of a Face and those Lineaments by which men guess at our internal Complexions and our Fortunes to come is a thing that does not very directly and simply lye under the Chapter of Beauty and Deformity no more than every good odour and serenity of Air promises Health nor all fogg and stink Infection and a time of Pestilence Such as accuse Ladies of contradicting their Beauty by their Manners do not always hit right for in a Face which is none of the best there may lye some air of probity and trust as on the contrary I have seen betwixt two beautiful Eyes menaces of a dangerous and malignant Nature There are some Physiognomies that are favourable so that in a crowd of victorious Enemies you shall presently choose amongst men you never saw before one rather than another to whom to surrender and with whom to intrust your Life and yet not properly upon the Consideration of Beauty A mans look is but a feeble warranty and yet it is something considerable too And if I were to lash them I would most severely scourge the wicked ones who belye and betray the promises that Nature has planted in their Fore-heads I should with great Severity punish Malice in a mild and gentle Aspect It seems as if there were some happy and some unhappy Faces and I believe there is some Art in distinguishing affable from simple Faces severe from rude malicious from pensive scornful from melancholick and such other bordering Qualities There are Beauties which are not only fair but sour and
Let such as those sit at home It is in every man indecent but in a Souldier vicious and intolerable who as Philopoemenes said ought to accustom himself to all variety and inequality of Life Though I have been brought up as much as was possible to liberty and indifference yet so it is that growing old and having more settled upon certain forms my Age is now past Instruction and I have henceforward nothing to do but to keep it up as well as I can Custom has already e're I was aware so imprinted its Character in me in certain things that I look upon it as a kind of excess to leave them off And without a force upon my self cannot sleep in the day-time nor eat between meals nor break-fast nor go to bed without a great interval betwixt eating and sleeping as of three hours after Supper nor get Children but before I sleep and never standing upon my feet nor endure my own Sweat nor quench my thirst either with pure Water or Wine nor keep my head long bare nor cut my hair after dinner and should be as uneasie without my Gloves as without my Shirt or without washing when I rise from Table or out of my bed and could not lye without a Canopy and Curtains as if they were necessary things I could dine without a Table-cloth but without a clean Napkin after the German fashion very incommodiously I foul them more than they or the Italians do and make but little use either of Spoon or Fork I am sorry that the same is not in use amongst us that I see the Example of in Kings which is to change our Napkins at every service as they do our Plates We are told of that laborious Souldier Marius that growing old he became nice in his Drinking and never drank but out of a peculiar Cup of his own I in like manner have suffer'd my self to fancy a certain form of Glasses and do not willingly drink in common Glasses no more than from a common hand All metal offends me in comparison of a clear and transparent matter let my eyes taste too according to their capacity I owe several other such niceties to Custom Nature has also on the other side helpt me to some of hers as no more to be able to endure two full meals in one day without overcharging my Stomach nor a total abstinence from one of those meals without filling my self with Wind drying up my Mouth and dulling my Appetite and finding great inconvenience in the Evening Air. For of late years in night marches which often happen to be all night long after five or six hours my Stomach begins to be queasie with a violent pain in my Head so that I always vomit before the day can break When others go to break-fast I go to sleep and when I rise am as brisk and gay as before I had always been told that the serene never desperst it self but in the beginning of the Night but for certain years past long and familiar frequenting a Lord possess'd with this Opinion that the serene is more sharp and dangerous about the declining of the Sun an hour or two before his Set which he carefully avoids and despises that of the Night he had almost imprinted in me not only his Discourse but his Opinion What shall the very doubt and inquisition wound our Imagination so as to turn to our Inconvenience Such as absolutely and on a sudden give way to their Propensions put a total ruine upon themselves And I am sorry for several Gentlemen who through the Folly of their Physicians have in their Youth and Health put themselves into Consumptions It were yet better to endure a Cough than by disusance for ever to lose the commerce of the common Life in an Action of so great use Ill natur'd Science to interdict us the sweetest and most pleasant hours of the Day Let us keep Possession of it to the last For the most part a man hardens himself by being obstinate and corrects his Constitution as Caesar did the Falling-sickness by dint of Contempt A man should addict himself to the best Rules but not inslave himself to them if not to such if there be any such to which the Obligation and Servitude are of Profit Both Kings and Philosophers go to stool and Ladies too publick Lives are bound to Ceremony mine that is obscure and private enjoys all natural Dispensation Souldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to Indiscretion wherefore I shall say this of this action of exonerating Nature that it is necessary to referr it to certain prescrib'd and nocturnal Hours and force a mans self to it by Custom as I have done but not to subject himself as I have done in my declining years to a particular Convenience of Place and Seat for that purpose and make it troublesome by long sitting and yet in the foulest Offices is it not in some measure excusable to require more care and cleanliness Natura homo mundum elegans animal est Man is by Nature a clean and elegant Creature Of all the actions of Nature I am the most impatient of being interrupted in that I have seen many Souldiers troubled with the unruliness of their Bellies whilst mine and I never fail of our punctual assignation which is at leaping out of Bed if some indispensable Business or Sickness do not molest us I do then think as I said before that sick men can better place themselves any where in better safety than in sitting still in that course of Life wherewith they have been bred and train'd up Alteration be it what it will does distemper and astonish Can any believe that Chest-nuts can hurt a Perigourdin or one of Luca or Milk and Cheese the Mountain People men enjoy them not only a new but a contrary Method of Life a change that the more healthfull could not endure Prescribe Water to a Breton of threescore and ten shut a Sea-man up in a Stove and forbid a Basque Foot-man walking they will deprive them of Motion and in the end of Air and Light an vivere tanti est Cogimur à suctis animum suspendere rebus Atque ut vivamus vivere desinimus Hoc superesse reor quibus spirabilis aer Et lux qua regimur redditur ipsa gravis Is Life of such a mighty consequence We must accustom'd things quite over give And that we may live we must cease to live I can't imagine they should longer live Whom light and air by which they live do grieve If they do no other good they do this at least that they prepare Patients betimes for Death by little and little undermining and cutting off the usage of Life Both well and sick I have ever willingly suffer'd my self to obey the Appetites that prest upon me I give great Authority to my propensions and desires I do not love to cure one Disease by another I hate remedies that are more troublesom than
But withal if it once comes in my sight 't is in vain to perswade me to forbear so that when I design to Fast I must be parted from those that eat Suppers and must have only so much given me as is required for a regular Collation for if I sit down to Table I forget my resolution When I order my Cook to alter the manner of dressing any Dish of Meat all my Family know what it means that my Stomach is out of order and that I shall scarce touch it I love to have all meats that will indure it very little boyl'd or roasted and love them mightily mortified and even to stinking in many Nothing but hardness generally offends me of any other quality I am as patient and indifferent as any man I have known So that contrary to the common humour even in Fish it oft happens that I find them both too fresh and too firm Not for want of Teeth which I ever had good even to Excellence and that Age does but now begin to threaten at this time of my Life I have ever been us'd every Morning to rub them with a Napkin and before and after Dinner God is favourable to those whom he makes to dye by degrees 't is the only benefit of old Age the last Death will be so much the less painful it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most I have one Tooth lately fall'n out without drawing and without pain it was the natural term of its duration Both that part of my Being and several others are already dead and others half dead of those that were most active and in highest esteem during my vigorous years so that I melt and steal away from my self What a folly would it be in my understanding to apprehend the height of this fall already so much advanc'd as if it were from the utmost Precipice I hope I shall not I in truth receive a principal Consolation in the meditations of my Death that it will be just and natural and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope from Destiny any other but unlawfull Favour Men make themselves believe that they have formerly had as greater Statures so longer Lives But they deceive themselves and Solon who was of those elder times does nevertheless limit the Duration of Life to threescore and ten years I who have so much and so universally ador'd this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a mean is best of ancient times and shall I who have concluded the most moderate measure the most perfect pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old Age Whatever happens contrary to the Course of Nature may be troublesome but what comes according to her should always be acceptable and pleasant Omnia quae secundum Naturam fiunt sunt habenda in bonis All things that are done according to Nature are to be accounted good And so Plato likewise says that the Death which is occasion'd by Wounds and Diseases is violent but that which surprises us old Age conducting us to it is of all others the most easie and in some sort delicious Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert senibus maturitas Young men are taken away by force old men by Maturity Death mixes and confounds it self throughout with Life decay anticipates its Hour and Shoulders even into the course of our growing up I have Pictures of my self taken at five and twenty and five and thirty years of Age I compare them with that lately drawn how often is it no more me how much more is my present Image unlike the former than to that I shall go out of the World withall It is too much to abuse Nature to make her trot so far that she must be forc'd to leave us and abandon our Conduct our Eyes Teeth Legs and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and begg'd assistance and to resign us into the hands of Art being weary of following us her self I am not very fond either of Sallets or Fruits except Melons My Father hated all sorts of Sawces and I love them all Eating too much hurts me but for the quality of what I eat I do not yet certainly know that any sort of Meat disagrees with my Stomach neither have I observed that either Full-moon or Decrease Spring or Autum are hurtfull to me We have in us motions that are inconstant and for which no reason can be given For Example I found Radishes first grateful to my Stomach since that nauseous and now at present grateful again In several other things likewise I find my Stomach and Appetite to vary after the same manner I have chang'd and chang'd again from White to Claret from Claret to White I am a great lover of Fish and consequently make my Fasts Feasts and my Feasts Fasts and believe what some People say that it is more easie of digestion than Flesh. As I make a Conscience of eating Flesh upon Fish-days so does my Taste make a Conscience of mixing Fish and Flesh the difference betwixt them seems to me to be too great so to do From my Youth I have us'd sometimes to be out of the way at Supper either to sharpen my Appetite against the next Morning for as Epicurus fasted and made lean Meals to accustom his Pleasure to make shift without abundance I on the contrary do it to prepare my Pleasure to make better and more chearful use of Abundance or else I fasted to preserve my Vigour for the service of some Action of Body or Mind for both the one and the other of those are cruelly dull'd in me by Repletion and above all things I hate that foolish coupling of so healthful and spritely a Goddess with that little belching God bloated with the fume of his Liquor or to cure my sick Stomach and for want of fit Company For I say as the same Epicurus did that a man is not so much to regard what he eats as with whom And commend Chilo that he would not engage himself to be at Perianders Feast till he first was inform'd who were to be the other Guests No Dish is so acceptable to me nor no Sawce so alluring as that which is extracted from Society I think it to be more wholesome to eat more liesurely and less and to eat ofter but I will have the value of Appetite and Hunger enhanc'd I should take no pleasure to be fed with three or four pittiful and stinted Repasts a day after a Physical manner Who will assure me that if I have a good Appetite in the morning I shall have the same at Supper But especially let us old Fellows take the first opportune time of eating and leave to Almanack-makers the hopes and Prognosticks The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure let us take hold of the present and known I avoid constancy in these Laws of Fasting Who will that one Form shall serve him let him evade the continuing of it We harden our selves
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
us to trick our selves with their Beauties and hide our selves under their Spoils their Wool Feathers Hair and Silk Let us observe as to the rest that Man is the sole Animal whose Nudities offend his own Companions and the only one who in his natural Actions withdraws and hides himself from his own Kind And really 't is also an Effect worth Consideration that they who are Masters in the Trade prescribe as a Remedy for amorous Passions the full and free View of the Body a Man desires so that to cool the Ardour there needs no more but at liberty to see and contemplate the Parts he loves Ille quòd obscaenas in aperto corpore partes Viderat in cursu qui fuit haesit amor The Loves that's tilting when those Parts appear Open to View flags in the hot Carreer And altho this Receipt may peradventure proceed from a nice and cold Humor It is notwithstanding a very great sign of our want of Strength and Mettle that Use and Acquaintance should make us disgust one another It is not Modesty so much as Cunning and Prudence that makes our Ladies so Circumspect to refuse us Admittance into their Cabinets before they are painted and trickt up for the publick View Nec Veneres nostras hoc fallit quò magis ipsae Omnia summopere hos vitae post scenta celant Quos retinere volunt adstrictoque esse in amore Of this our Ladies are full well aware Which makes them with such Privacy and Care Behind the Scene all those Defects remove Should check the Flame of those they most do love Whereas in several Animals there is nothing that we do not love and that does not please our Sences So that from their very Excrements we do not only extract wherewith to heighten our Sawces but also our richest Ornaments and Perfumes This Discourse reflects upon none but the ordinary sort of Women and is not so Sacrilegious as to comprehend those Divine Supernatural and extraordinary Beauties which we see shine amongst us like Stars under a Corporeal and Terrestial Vayle As to the rest the very Share that we allow to Beasts of the bounty of Nature by our own Confession is very much to their Advantage We attribute to our selves imaginary and fantastick Goods future and absent Goods for which human Capacity cannot of her self be Responsible Or Goods that we falsly attribute to our selves by the Licence of Opinion as Reason Knowledg and Honor And leave to them for their Divident Essential Maniable and Palpable Goods as Peace Repose Security Innocence and Health Health I say the fairest and richest Present that Nature can make us Insomuch that the Philosopher even the Stoick is so bold as to say that Heraclytus and Pherecides could they have truck'd their Wisdom for Health and have deliver'd themselves the one of his Dropsie and the other of the lowsy Disease that tormented him by the bargain they had done well By which they set a greater Value upon Wisdom comparing and putting it in the Ballance with Health than they do in this other Proposition which is also theirs They say that if Circe had presented Vlysses with two Potions the one to make a Fool become a Wise-Man and the other to make a Wise-Man become a Fool that Vlysses ought rather to have chosen the last than to consent that Circe had chang'd his human Figure into that of a Beast And say that Wisdom it self would have spoke to him after this manner Forsake me let me alone rather than lodg me under the Body and Figure of an Ass. How The Philosophers then will abandon this great and divine Wisdom for this corporal and terrestrial Covering It is than no more by Reason by Discourse and by the Soul that we excel Beasts 'T is by our Beauty our fair Complexion and our fine symmetry of Parts for which we must quit our Intelligence our Prudence and all the rest Well I accept this natural and free Confession Certainly they knew that those Parts upon which we so much value our selves are no other than meer Fancy If Beasts then had all the Virtue Knowledg Wisdom and Stoical Perfection they would still be Beasts and would not be comparable to Man Miserable Wicked and a Madman For in fine whatever is not as we are is nothing considerable And God to procure himself an Esteem amongst us must put himself into that Shape as we shall shew anon By which it does appear that it is not upon any true ground of Reason but by a foolish Pride and vain Opinion that we prefer our selves before other Animals and separate our selves from their Society and Condition But to return to what I was upon before we have for our part Inconstancy Irresolution Incercitude Sorrow Superstition Solicitude of things to come even after we shall be no more Ambition Avarice Jealousy Envy Irregular Frantick and Untam'd Appetites War Lying Disloyalty Detraction and Curiosity Doubtless we have strangely overpay'd this Fine upon which we so much glorify our selves and this Capacity of Judging and Knowing if we have bought it at the Price of this infinite number of Passions to which we are eternally subject Unless we shall yet think fit as Socrates does to add to the Counterpoise that notable Prerogative above Beasts that whereas Nature has prescrib'd them certain Seasons and Limits for the Delights of Venus she has given us the Reins at all Hours and all Seasons Vt vinum aegrotis quia prodest rarò nocet saepissime melius est non adhibere omnino quà m spe dubiae salutis in apertam perniciem incurrere Sic haud scio an melius fuerit humano generi motum istum celerem cogitationis acumen solertiam quam rationem vocamus qoniam pestifera sint multis admodum paucis salutaria non dari omnimo quà m tam munificè tam largè dari As it falls out that Wine often hurts the Sick and very rarely does them good it is better not to give them any at all than to run into an apparent Danger out of hope of an incertain Benefit So I know not whether it had not been better for Mankind that this quick Motion this penetrancy of Imagination this Subtlety that we call Reason had not been given to Man at all considering how pestiferous it is to many and healthful but to few than to have been conferr'd in so abundant manner and with so liberal a Hand Of what Advantage can we conceive the Knowledg of so many things was to Varro and Aristotle Did it exempt them from human Inconveniences Were they by it freed from the Accidents that ly heavy upon the Shoulders of a Porter Did they extract from their Logick any Consolation for the Gout Or for knowing that the Humour is lodged in the Joints did they feel it the less Have they compounded with Death by knowing that some Nations rejoice at his Approach Or with Cuckoldry by knowing that in some part
of the World Wives are in Common On the contrary having been reputed the greatest Men for Knowledg the one amongst the Romans and the other amongst the Greeks and in a time when Learning did most flourish we have not heard nevertheless that they had any particular Excellence in their Lives Nay the Greek had enough to do to clear himself from some notable Blemishes in his Have we observ'd that Pleasure and Health have had a better relish with him that understands Astrologie and Grammar than with others Illiterati num minus nervi rigent Th' illiterate Plough-Man is as Fit For Venus Service as the Wit And Shame and Poverty less troublesom to the first than the last Scilicet morbis debilitate carebis Et luctum curam effugies tempora vitae Longa tibi post haec fato meliore dabuntur Thou shall be free Both from Disease and from Infirmity From Care and Sorrow and thy Life shall be Prolong'd under a better Destiny I have known in my time a hundred Artizans and a hundred Labourers wiser and more happy than the Rectors of the Vniversity and whom I had much rather have resembled Learning methinks has its Place amongst the necessary things of Life as Glory Nobility Dignity or at the most as Riches and such other Qualities which indeed are useful to it but remotely and more by Opinion than by Nature We stand very little more in need of Offices Rules and Laws of living in our Society than Cranes and Emmets do in theirs And yet we see that they carry themselves very regularly and without Erudition If Man was Wise he would take the true value of every thing according as it was more utile and proper to his Life Whoever will number us by our Actions and Deportments will find many more excellent Men amongst the Ignorant than the Learned I say in all sort of Vertue The old Rome seems to me to have been of much greater Value both for Peace and War than that learned Rome that ruin'd it self And tho all the rest should be equal yet the Prowess Integrity and Innocency would remain to the Ancients for they cohabit singularly well with Simplicity But I will leave this Discourse that would lead me farther than I am willing to follow and shall only say this farther 't is only Humility and Submission that can make a compleat good Man We are not to leave the Knowldg of his Duty to every Man 's own Judgment We are to prescribe it to him and not suffer him to choose it at his own Discretion Otherwise according to the Imbecillity and infinite Variety of our Reasons and Opinions we should at last forge ourselves Duties that would as Epicurus says enjoine us to eat one another The first Law that ever God gave to Man was a Law of pure Obedience It was a Commandment naked and simple wherein Man had nothing to enquire after or to dispute forasmuch as to obey is the proper Office of a Rational Soul ackowledging a heavenly Superior and Benefactor From Obedience and Submission spring all other Vertues as all Sin does from Self-Opinion And on the contrary the first Temptation that by the Devil was offered to human Nature its first Poison insinuated it self by the Promises was made us of Knowledg and Wisdom Eritis sicut Dii scientes bonum malum Ye shall be as Gods knowing Good and Evil And the Syrens in Homer to allure Vlysses and draw him within the danger of their Snares offered to give him Knowledg The Plague of Man is the Opinion of Wisdom And for this reason it is that Ignorance is so recommended to us by our Religion as proper to Faith and Obedience Cavete ne quis vos decipiat per Philosophiam inanes seductiones secundum elementa mundi Take heed lest any Man deceive you by Philosophy and vain Deceit after the Tradition of Men and the Rudiments of the World There is in this a general Consent amonst all sorts of Philosophers that the soveraign Good consists in the Tranquillity of the Soul and Body But where shall we find it Ad summum sapiens uno minor est Jove dives Liber honoratus pulcher rex denique regum Praecipuè sanus nisi cùm pituita molesta est He that is Wise inferior is to none If he be Wise indeed but Jove alone Rich Free and Graceful these do Reverence bring And lastly of the Greates Kings a King And cheifely sound unless sometimes there flow A trickling Rheume upon his Lungs or so It seems in truth that Nature for the Consolation of our miserable and wretched Estate has only given us Presumption for our Inheritance 'T is as Epictetus says That Man has nothing properly his own but the use of his Opinions We have nothing but Wind and Smoak for our Portion The Gods have Health in Essence says Philosophy and Sickness in Intelligence Man on the contrary posses his Goods by Fancy his Ills in Essence We have had Reason to magnify the Power of our Imagination for all our Goods are only in Dream Hear this poor calamicous Animal Huff There is nothing says Cicero so charming as the Knowledg of Letters of Letters I say by means whereof the Infinity of things the immense grandeur of Nature the Heavens even in this World the Earth and the Seas are discovered to us 'T is they that have taught us Religion Moderation and the grandeur of Courage and that have rescu'd our Soules from Obscurity to make her see all things high low first and last and indifferent 't is they that furnish us wherewith to live happily and well and conduct us to pass over our Lives without Displeasure and without Offence Does not this Man seem to speak of the Condition of the Ever-living and Almighty God And as to the Effect a thousand little Country-Women have lived Lives more equal more sweet and constant than his Deus ille fuit Deus inclute Memmi Qui princeps vitae rationem invenit eam quae Nunc appellatur sapientia quÃque per artem Fluctibus è tantis vitam tantisque tenebris In tam tranquilla tam clara luce locavit That God great Memmus was a God no doubt Who Prince of Life first found that Reason out Now Wisdom call'd and by his Art who did That Life in Tempests tost and Darkness hid Place in so great a Calm and clear a Light Here are brave ranting Words But a very light Accident put this Mans Understanding in a worse Condition than that of the meanest Shepheard Notwithstanding this Instructing God this Divine Wisdom Of the same stamp of Impudence is the Promise of Democritus his Book I am going to speak of all things And that foolish Title that Aristotle prefixes to one of his of the Immortal Gods And the Judgment of Chrysippus That Dion was as Vertuous as God And my beloved Seneca does indeed acknowledg that God has given him
the Principality of the Indies That if they would become Tributaries to him they should be very gently and courteously us'd at the same time requiring of them Victuals for their Nourishment and Gold whereof to make some pretended Medicine They moreover remonstrated to them the belief of the only God and the Truth of our Religion which they advis'd them to embrace to which they also added some Threats To which they receiv'd this Answer That as to their being peaceable they did not seem to be such if they were so As to their King he seem'd to be neccesitous and poor because he ask'd and he who had given him that divident a man that lov'd dissention to go give away that to another which was none of his own to bring it into dispute against the ancient Possessors As to Victuals they would supply them that of Gold they had little it being a thing they had in very small esteem as being of no use to the service of Life whereas their Care was only bent to pass it over happily and pleasantly but that what they could find excepting what was employ'd in the Service of their Gods they might freely take As to one only God the Proposition had pleas'd them well but that they would not change their Religion both because they had so happily liv'd in it and that they were not wont to take advice of any but their Friends and those they knew As to their Menaces it was a sign of want of Judgment to threaten those whose Nature and Power was to them unknown That therefore they were to make haste to avoid their Coast for they were not us'd to take the Civilities and Remonstrances of arm'd Men and Strangers in good part otherwise they should do by them as they had done by those others shewing them the Heads of several executed men round the Walls of their City A fair Example of the gibberish and beginning to speak of this Infancy But so it is that the Spaniards did neither in this nor several other places where they did not find the Merchandize they sought for make any stay or any attempt whatever other Conveniencies were there to be had Witness the Cannibals Of two the most puissant Monarchs of that World and peradventure of this Kings of so many Kings and the last they exterminated that of Peru having been taken in a Battel and put to so excessive a ransom as exceeds all belief and it being faithfully paid and that he had by his Conversation given manifest signs of a franck liberal and constant Spirit and of a clear and setled Understanding the Conquerours had a mind after having exacted a million three hundred twenty five thousand and five hundred weight of Gold besides Silver and other things which amounted to no less so that their Horses were shod with Massie Gold yet to see at the price of what Disloyalty and Injustice whatever what the remainder of the Treasures of this King might be and to possess themselves of that also To which end a false Accusation was preferr'd against him and false Witnesses brought in to prove that he went about to raise an Insurrection in his Provinces by that means to procure his own Liberty Whereupon by the virtuous Sentence of those very men who had by this Treachery conspir'd his ruine he was condemn'd to be publickly hang'd after having made him buy off the Torment of being burnt alive by the Baptism they gave him immediately before Execution A horrid and unheard of Barbarity which nevertheless he underwent without going less either in Word or Look with a truly grave and royal Behaviour After which to calm and appease the People daunted and astonished at so strange a thing they counterfeited great Sorrow for his Death and appointed most sumptuous Funerals The other King of Mexico after a long time defended his beleaguer'd City and having in this Siege manifested the utmost of what Suffering and Perseveration can do if ever Prince and People did and his Misfortune having deliver'd him alive into his Enemies hands upon Articles of being treated like a King neither did he in his Captivity discover any thing unworthy of that Title His Enemies after their Victory not finding so much Gold as they expected when they had search'd and rifled with their utmost Diligence they went about to procure Discoveries by the most cruel Torments they could invent upon the Prisoners they had taken but having profited nothing that way their Courages being greater than their Torments they arriv'd at last to such a degree of Fury as contrary to their Faith and the Law of Nations to condemn the King himself and one of the principal Noble-men of his Court to the Wrack in the Presence of one another This Lord finding himself overcome with Pain being environ'd with burning Coals pittifully turn'd his dying Eyes towards his Master as it were to ask him pardon that he was able to endure no more whereat the King darting at him a fierce and severe look as reproaching his Cowardize and Pusillanimity with a rude and constant Voice said to him thus only And what dost thou think I suffer said he am I in a Bath am I more at ease than thou Whereupon the other immediately quail'd under the Torment and died upon the Place The King half roasted was carried thence not so much out of pity for what compassion ever touch'd so barbarous Souls who upon the doubtful information of some Vessel of Gold to be made a Prey of caus'd not only a Man but a King so great in Fortune and Desert to be broil'd before their Eyes but because his Constancy rendred their Cruelty still more shameful They afterward hang'd him for having nobly attempted to deliver himself by Arms from so long a Captivity where he dyed with a Courage becoming so Magnanimous a Prince Another time they burnt in the same fire four hundred and sixty men alive at once the four hundred of the common People the sixty the principal Lords of a Province no other but meer Prisoners of War We have these Narratives from themselves for they do not only own it but boast of it Could it be for a testimony of their Justice or their Zeal to Religion Doubtless these are ways too differing and contrary to so holy an end Had they propos'd to themselves to extend our Faith they would have considered that it does not amplifie in the possession of Territories but in the gaining of men and would have more than satisfied themselves with the slaughters occasion'd by the necessity of War without indifferently mixing a Massacre as upon wild Beasts as universal as Fire and Sword could make it having only by their good will sav'd so many as they intended to make miserable Slaves of for the Work and Service of their Mines So that many of the Captains were put to death upon the place of Conquest by order of the King of Castile justly
offended with the horror of their Deportments and almost all of them hated and disesteem'd God did meritoriously permit that all this great Plunder should be swallow'd up by the Sea in Transportation or by Civil Wars wherewith they devoured one another and the greatest part was buried upon the Place with out any fruit of their Victory As to what concerns the Revenue that being in the hands of so parcimonious and so prudent a Prince it so little answers the expectation was given to his Predecessors of it and that first abundance of Riches which was found at the first Landing in those new discovered Countreys for tho' a great deal be fetch'd from thence yet we see 't is nothing in comparison of that ought to be expected it is that the use of Coin was there utterly unknown and that consequently their Gold was found all hoarded together being of no other use but for Ornament and Shew as a Furniture reserv'd from Father to Son by many puissant Kings who always drain'd their Mines to make this vast heap of Vessels and Statues for the decoration of their Palaces and Temples whereas our Gold is always in motion and Traffick We cut ours into a thousand small pieces and cast it into a thousand Forms and scatter and disperse it a thousand ways But suppose our Kings should thus hoard up all the Gold they could get in several Ages and let it lye idle by them Those of the Kingdom of Mexico were in some sort more civiliz'd and greater Artists than the other Nations that were beyond them Therefore did they judge as we do that the World was near its period and look'd upon the Desolation we brought amongst them for a certain Sign of it They believ'd that the Existence of the World was divided into five Ages and the Life of five successive Suns of which four had already ended their time and that that which gave them Light was the fifth The first perish'd with all other Creatures by an universal Inundation of Water The second by the Heavens falling upon us which suffocated every living Thing to which Age they assign the Giants and shew'd bones to the Spaniards according to the proportion of which the Stature of men amounted to twenty hands high The third by Fire which burnt and consum'd all The fourth by an Emotion of the Air and Wind which came with such violence as to beat down even many Mountains wherein the men dyed not but were turned into Baboons what impressions will not the weakness of human Belief admit After the death of this fourth Sun the World was twenty five years in perpetual darkness in the fifteenth of which a Man and a Woman were created that restored human Race ten years after upon a certain Day the Sun appeared newly created and since the account of their years take beginning from that day The third day after his Creation the ancient Gods dyed and the new ones are since born daily After what manner they think this last Sun shall perish my Author knows not But their number of this fourth Change agrees with the great Conjunction of Stars that eight hundred and odd years ago as Astrologers suppose produc'd great Alterations and Novelties in the World As to Pomp and Magnificence upon the account of which I am engag'd in this Discourse neither Greece Rome nor Aegypt whether for utility difficulty or state compare any of their Works with the way to be seen in Peru made by the Kings of the Countrey from the City of Quito to that of Cusco three hundred Leagues straight even five and twenty Paces wide pav'd and enclos'd on both sides with high and beautiful Walls and close by them on the inside two clear Rivolets border'd with a beautiful sort of a Tree which they call Molly in which Work where they met with Rocks and Mountains they cut them through and made them even and fill'd up Pits and Valleys with Lime and Stone to make them level At the end of every days Journey are beautiful Palaces furnish'd with Provisions Vestments and Arms as well for Travellers as for the Armys that are to pass that way In the estimate of this Work I have reckon'd the difficulty which is particularly considerable in that Place They did not build with any Stones less than ten foot square and had no other conveniency of carriage but by drawing their load themselves by force of Arms and knew not so much as the Art of Scaffolding nor any other way of standing to their Work but by throwing up Earth against the Building as it rose higher taking it away again when they had done Let us here return to our Coaches instead of which and of all other sorts of Carriages they caus'd themselves to be carried by men and upon their Shoulders This last King of Peru the day that he was taken was thus carried betwixt two upon staves of Gold and set in a Chair of Gold in the middle of his Battel As many of these Sedan-men as were kill'd to make him fall for they would take him alive so many others and they contended for it took the place of those that were slain so that they could never beat him down what slaughter soever they made of those People till a Light horse-man seizing upon him brought him down CHAP. VII Of the inconvenience of Greatness SInce we cannot attain unto it let us revenge our selves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against any thing to proclaim its defects because they are in all things to be found how beautiful or how much to be coveted however It has in general this manifest advantage that it can go less when it pleases and has very near the absolute choice of both the one and the other Condition For a man does not fall from all heights there are several from which one may descend without falling down It does indeed appear to me that we value it at too high a rate and also over value the resolution of those whom we have either seen or heard have contemn'd it or displac'd themselves of their own accord It s Essence is not so evidently commodious that a man may not without a miracle refuse it I find it a very hard thing to undergo Misfortunes but to be content with a competent measure of Fortune and to avoid Greatness I think a very easie matter 'T is methinks a Virtue to which I who am none of the nicest could without any great endeavour arrive What then is to be expected from them that would yet put into Consideration the glory attending this refusal wherein there may lurk worse Ambition than even in the desire it self and Fruition of Greatness Forasmuch as Ambition never comports it self better according to it self than when it proceeds by obscure and unfrequented wayes I incite my Courage to Patience but I rein it as much as I can towards desire I have as much to wish for as another and allow my
sign either that Wit is grown shorter sighted when it is satisfied or that it is grown weary No generous Mind can stop in it self it will still pretend further and beyond its power it has Sallies beyond its Effects If it do not advance and press forward and retire rush turn and wheel about 't is but spritely by halves its pursuits are without Bound or Method its aliment is Admiration ambiguity the Chace which Apollo sufficiently declared in always speaking to us in a double obscure and oblique Sence not feeding but amusing and puzling us 'T is an irregular and perpetual motion without Example and without Aim His Inventions heat pursue and interproduce one another Ainsi voit on en unraisseau coulant Sans fin l'une eau apres l'autre roulant Et tout de rang d'un eternel conduict L'une suit l'autre l'une autre fuit Par cette-cy celle-là est poussée Et cette-cy par l'autre est devancée Tousiours l'eau va dans l'eau tousiours est-ce Mesme ruisseau tousiours eau diverse So in a running stream one Wave we see After another roul incessantly And as they glide each does successively Pursue the other each the other fly By this that 's ever-more push'd on and this By that continually preceded is The Water still does into Water swill Still the same Brook but different Water still There is more ado to interpret Interpretations than Things and more Books upon Books than upon all other Subjects we do dothing but comment upon one another Every place saies with Commentaries of Authors there is great scarcity Is it not the principal and most reputed knowledge of our Ages to understand the Learned Is it not the common and almost end of all Studies Our Opinions are grafted upon one another the first serves for a stock to the second the second to the third and so forth Thus step by step we climb the Ladder From whence it come to pass that he which is mounted highest has oft more Honour than Merit for he is got up but a grain upon the shoulders of the last but one How oft and peradventure how foolishly have I stretch'd my Book to make it speak of it self foolishly if for no other reason but this that I ought to call to mind what I say of others who do the same These frequent amorous glances that they so oft cast upon their works witness that their Hearts pant with self love and that even the disdainful Severity wherewith they lash and scourge them are no other than the wanton Dissimulations of a nataral kindness According to Aristotle whose valuing and undervaluing himself oft spring from the same air of Arrogancy I urge for my excuse that I ought in this to have more liberty than others forasmuch as I write of my self and of my Writings very near as I do of my other Actions and let my Theam return upon my self I know not whether or no every one else will take it I have observ'd in Germany that Luther has left as many Divisions and Disputes about the doubt of his Opinions and more than he himself has rais'd upon the Holy Scriptures Our contest is verbal I demand what Nature is what Pleasure Circle and Substitution are The Question is about words and is answer'd accordingly A Stone is a Body but if a man should further urge and what is a Body Substance and what is Substance and so on he would drive the respondent to the end of his Calâ—pin We exchange one word for another and oft times for one less understood I better know what man is than I know what animal is or mortal or rational To satisfie one doubt they pop 〈◊〉 in the mouth with three 't is the Hydra's head Socrates ask'd Memnon what Virtue was There is says Memnon the Virtue of a Man and of a Woman of a Magistrate and of a private Person of an old Man and of a Child very well cry'd Socrates we were in quest of our Virtue and thou hast brought us a whole swarm He put out one question and thou returnest us a whole Hive As no Event nor no Face intirely resembles another so do they not intirely differ An ingenious mixture of Nature If our Faces were not alike we could not distinguish man from Beast if they were not unlike we could not distinguish one man from another All things hold by some Similitude all Example halts And the relation which is drawn from Experience is always faulty and imperfect comparisons are always coupled at one end or other So do the Laws serve and are fitted to every one of our Affairs by some wrested bias'd and forc'd Interpretation Since the Ethick Laws that concern the particular Duty of every one in himself are so hard to be taught and observ'd as we see they are 't is no wonder if those who govern so many particulars is much more Do but consider the form of this Justice that governs us 't is a true Testimony of humane weakness so full it is of Error and Contradiction What we find to be Favour and Severity in Justice and we find so much of them both that I know not whether the mean is so often met with are sick parts and unequal Members of the very Body and offence of Justice The Country People run to bring me News in great haste that they just left in a Forrest of mine a man with a hundred Wounds upon him who was yet breathing and begg'd of them Water for pitty's sake and help to carry him to some place of relief saying they durst not come near him but run away lest the Officers of Justice should catch them there and as it falls out with those who are found near a murther'd Person they should be call'd in question about this accident to their utter ruine having neither Money nor Friends to defend their Innocence What should I have said to these People 'T is certain that this Office of humanity would have brought them into trouble How many Innocents have we known that have been punish'd without the Judges fault and how many that have not arriv'd at our knowledge This hapen'd in my time Certain men were condemn'd to die for a murther committed their Sentence if not pronounc'd at least determin'd and concluded on The Judges just in the nick are advertis'd by the Officers of an inferiour Court hard by that they have some men in Custody who have directly confess'd the said Murther and make an undubitable discovery of all the particulars of the Fact 'T was then notwithstanding put to the question whether or no they ought to suspend Execution of the Sentence already past upon the first accus'd They consider'd the novelty of the Example and the consequence of reversing Judgments that the Sentence of Death was duly pass'd and the Judges acquit of repentance To conclude these poor Devils were sacrifis'd to the forms of Justice Philip or some other provided against a like Inconvenience
after this manner He had condemn'd a man in a great fine towards another by a determinate Judgment The truth some time after being discover'd he found that he had pass'd an unjust Sentence on one side was the Reason of the Cause on the other side the Reason of the Judiciary Forms He in some sort satisfied both leaving the Sentence in the state it was and out of his own Purse recompencing the interest of the condemn'd party But he had to do in a repairable affair mine were irreparably hang'd How many Sentences have I seen more criminal than the Crimes themselves All which makes me remember the ancient Opinions That there is a necessity a man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross and injustice in little things that will come to do Justice in great that humane justice is form'd after the model of Physick according to which all that is utile is also just and honest and of what is held by the Stoicks That Nature her self proceeds contrary to Justice in most of her works and of what is receiv'd by the Cyrennicks that there is nothing just of it self but that Customs and Laws make Justice And what the Theodorians hold that maintain Theft Sacriledge and all sorts of Vncleanness just in a wise man if he knows them to be profitable to him there is no Remedy I am in the same case that Alcibiades was that I will never if I can help it put my self into the hands of a man who shall determine of my Head where my Life and Honour shall more depend upon the care and diligence of my Attorney than my own innocence I would venture my self with such a Justice as would take notice of my good Deeds as well as my ill and where I had as much to hope as to fear Indemnity is not sufficient pay to a man who does better than not to do amiss but our Justice presents us but one hand and that the left hand too let him be who he will he shall be sure to go off with less In China of which Kingdom the Governments and Arts without commerce with or knowledge of ours surpasses our best Examples in several parts of Excellence and of which the History gives me to understand how much greater and more various the World is than either the Ancients or We have been able to penetrate The Officers deputed by the Prince to visit the state of his Provinces as they punish those who behave themselves ill in their Places so do they liberally reward those who have carried themselves above the common sort and beyond the necessity of their Duty they there present themselves not only to be approved but to get nor simply to be paid but to be presented No Judge thanks be to God has ever yet spoke to me in the quality of a Judge upon any account whatever whether my own or that of another whether Criminal or Civil nor no Prison has ever receiv'd me so much as upon the account of entring in to see it Imagination renders the very outside of a Goal formidable to me I am so inamour'd of Liberty that should I be interdicted the remotest corner of the Indies I should live a little more uneasie And whilst I can find either Earth or Air open in any part of the World I shall never lurk any where where I must hide my self Good God! how ill should I indure the condition wherein I see so many People nail'd to a corner of the Kingdom depriv'd of the priviledge of entring into the principal Cities and Courts and the liberty of the publick Roads for having quarrell'd with our Laws If those under which I live should but wag a finger at me by way of menace I would immediately go seek out others let them be where they would all my little Prudence in the Civil War wherein we are now ingag'd is imploy'd that they may not hinder my liberty of riding from place to place Now the Laws keep up their credit not for being just but because they are Laws It is the mystical foundation of their Authority and they have no other and 't is well it is so for they are oft made by Fools for the most part by men that out of hatred to equality go less in equity but always by men who are vain and irresolute Authors There is nothing so much nor so grosly nor so ordinarily faulty as the Laws Whoever obeys them because they are just does not justly obey them as he ought Our French Laws by their irregularity and deformity do in some sort lend a helping hand to disorder and corruption as is manifest in their Dispensation and Execution The Command is so perplext and inconstant that it in some sort excuses both Disobedience and the Vice of the interpretation the administration and the observation of it What fruit then soever we may extract from Experience yet that however will little advantage our Institution which we draw from foreign Examples if we make so little profit of that we have of our own which is more familiar to us and doubtless sufficient to instruct us in that whereof we have need I study my self more than any other Subject 'T is my Metaphysick 't is my Physick Qua Deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum Qua venit exoriens qua deficit unde coactis Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit Vnde salo superant venti quid flamine captet Eurus in nubes unde perennis aqua Sit ventura dies mundi quae subruat arces Quaerite quos agitat mundi labor By what means God the Universe does sway Or how the pale-fac'd Sister of the day When in increasing can her horns unite Till they contract into a full orb'd light Why Winds do of the Sea the better get Why Eurus blows and Clouds are always wet What day the Worlds great Fabrick must o'rethrow Let them inquire would the Worlds secrets know In this Vniversity I suffer my self to be ignorantly and negligently lead by the general Law of the World I shall know it well enough when I feel it my Learning cannot make it alter its course it will not change it self for me 't is folly to hope it and a greater folly to concern a man's self about it seeing it is necessarily alike publick and common The bounty and capacity of the Governour ought absolutely to discharge us of all care of the Government Philosophical Inquisitions and Contemplations serve for no other use but to increase our Curiosity Philosophers with great reason send us back to the Rules of Nature but they have nothing to do with so sublime a Knowledge they falsifie them and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate a Complexion from whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform a Subject as she has given us feet to walk withall so has she given us Prudence to guide us in Life not such an ingenious