have no business with any one but a man's self Hor. l. 2. Od. 16. Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo Multa Why cut'st thou out such mighty Work vain man Whose Life 's short date 's compriz'd in one poor span For we shall there find work enough to do without any need of Addition One complains more than of Death than he is thereby prevented of a glorious Victory another that he must die before he has married his Daughter or settled and provided for his Children a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his beloved Wife a fourth the conversation of his Son as the principal concerns of his Being For my part I am thanks be to God at this instant in such a condition that I am ready to dislodge whenever it shall please him without any manner of regret I disengage my self throughout from all Worldly Relations my leave is soon taken of all but my self Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the World more absolutely and purely and to shake hands with all manner of Interest in it than I expect to do The deadest Deaths are the best Lucret. l. 3. miser O miser aiunt omnia ademit Una dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae Wretch that I am they cry one fatal day So many joys of Life has snatch'd away And the Builder Aeneid l. 4. manent dit il opera interrupta minaeque Murorum ingentes aequataque machina Coelo Stupendious Piles say he neglected lie And Tow'rs whose Pinacles do pierce the Sky A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing or at least with no such passionate desire to see it brought to Perfection We are born to action Ovid. Amor. lib. 2. Eleg. 10. Cum moriar medium solvar inter opus When Death shall come he me will doubtless find Doing of something that I had design'd I would always have a man to be doing and as much as in him lies to extend and spin out the Offices of life and then let Death take me planting Cabbages but without any careful thought of him and much less of my Garden 's not being finished I saw one die who at his last gasp seem'd to be concern'd at nothing so much as that Destiny was about to cut the thread of a Chronicle History he was then compiling when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our Kings Lucret. l. 3. Illud in his rebus non addunt nec tibi earum J am desiderium rerum superinsidet una They tell us not that dying we 've no more The same desires and thoughts that heretosore We are to discharge our selves from these vulgar and hurtful Humours and Concerns To this purpose it was that men first appointed the places of Sepulture and Dormitories of the dead near adjoyning to the Churches and in the most frequent places of the City to accustom says Lycurgus the common People Women and Children that they should not be startled at the sight of a dead Corps and to the end that the continual Objects of Bones Graves Monuments and Funeral Obsequies should put us in Mind of our frail condition Silius Itaâ—icus l. 11. Quinetiam exhilarare viris convivia caede Mos olim miscere epulis spectacula dira Certatum ferro saepe super ipsa cadentum Pocula respersis non parco sanguine mensis 'T was therefore that the Ancients at their Feasts With tragick Objects us'd to treat their Guests Making their Fencers with their utmost spite Skill Force and Fury in their presence fight Till streams of Blood of those at last must fall Dash'd o'er 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 die would at the same time teach them to live Dâ—cearchus made one to which he gave that Title but it was designâ—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 Estatâ— 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 Corn. Galli vel potius Maximian Eleg. 1. He is senibus vitae portio quanta manet Alas to men
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 outcries 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 brutish negligence could it possibly lodge in the Brain of any man of Sense which I think utterly impossible sells us its merchandise 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 Idem l. 3. Ode 2. Nempe fugacem persequitur virum Nec parcit imbellis juventae Poplitibus timidoque tergo No speed of â—oot 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 Propert. l. 3. Eleg 17. altas 16. 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 thy 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 ways 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 aâ—d Mirth caus'd a dried Skeleton of a Man to be brought into the Room to serve for a Memento to their Guests Horat. l. 1. Epist 4. Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora. Think every day soon as the day is past Of thy Life's 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 in uncertain let us every where look for him The Premeditation of Death is the Premeditation of Liberty who has learnt to die 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 die delivers us from all Subjection and Constraint Paulus Aemilius 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 Nature do not help a little it is very hard for Art and Industry to perform any thing to purpose I am in my own Nature not melancholy but thoughtful and there is nothing I have more continually entertain'd my self withall than the Imaginations of Death even in the gayest and most wanton time of my Age. Catullus Num. 69. Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret Of florid Age in the most pleasant Spring In the Company of Ladies and in the height of Mirth some have perhaps thought me possess'd with some jealousie or meditating upon the Uncertainty of some imagin'd Hope whilst I was entertaining my self with the Remembrance of some one surpriz'd a few days before with a burning Fever of which he died returning from an Entertainment like this with his Head full of idle Fancies of Love and Jollity as mine was then and that for ought I knew the same Destiny was attending me Lucret. l 3. J am fuerit nec post unquam revocare licebit But now he had a being amongst Men Now gone and ne'er to be recall'd agen Yet did noâ— this Thought wrinkle my Forehead any more than any other It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such Imaginations as these at first but with often revolving them in a Man's Mind and having them frequent in our Thoughts they at last become so familiar as to be no trouble at all otherwise I for my part should be in a perpetual Fright and Frenzy for never Man was so distrustful of his Life never Man so indifferents for its Duration Neither Health which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and vigorous and very seldom interrupted does prolong nor Sickness contract my Hopes Methinks I scape every minute and it eternally runs in my Mind that what may be done to morrow may be done to day Hazards and Dangers do in truth little or nothing hasten our end and if we consider how many more remain and hang over our Heads besides the accident that immediately threatens us we shall find that the Sound and the Sick those that are abroad at Sea and those that sit by the Fire those who are engagâ—d in Battle and those who sit idle at home are the one as near it as the other Nemo altero fragilior est nemo in crastinum sui certior Senec. â—p 19. No man is more frail than another no more certain of the morrow For any thing I have to do before I die the longest leisure would appear too short were it but an Hours business I had to do A Friend of mine the other day turning over my Table-Book found in it a Memorandum of something I would have done after my Decease whereupon I told him as it was really true that though I was no more than a League 's distance only from my own House and merry and well yet when that thing came into my Head I made hast to write it down there because I was not certain to live till I came home As a man that am eternally brooding over my own thoughts and who confine them to my own particular Concerns I am upon the matter at all hours as well prepar'd as I am ever like to be and Death whenever he shall come can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before We should always as near as we can be booted and spurr'd and ready to go and above all things to take care at that time to
not frightful 423 Custom Stupifies our Senses 145 Custom of several Nations in Marriages 151 Custom 's Power 158 Custom veils the true Aspect of things 160 Custom fundamental Reason for many things 161 Custom of wearing Cloaths 353 Custom and Manners of the French 502 Cyrus great Master of Horse service 497 Cyrus's Reverence to Religion 22 D DEath discharges Men of all Obligations 39 Death the Day that judges of all the foregoing Years 90 Death of three most Execrable Persons 91 Death Vnavoidable 95 Death End of our Race 96 Death a harsh word to the Romans 97 Death has many ways to surprize Men. 98 Death's Remembrance profitable to Men. 102 Death's Image presented by the Aegyptians to the Company after their Feasts 108 Death's contempt certain foundation of Religion 112 Death part of the Order of the Vniverse 113 Death cannot concern us either Living or Dead 117 Death's Image less dreadful in War than at home 121 Death preferr'd to a continual Trouble 190 Death of Arius and his Pope Leo. 341 Death of Heliogabalus Ibid. Death of Irenaeus Ibid. Death of Ignatius and his Son both proscrib'd 350 Death of Lilius Giraldus and Costalin 351 Death what is several Opinions concerning the same 402 Death prevented or hastned 403 Death Shameful endur'd with great Courage Ibid. Death constantly lookt on the Face or Voluntarily sought after 409 Death Frightful to some People Ibid. Death of Otho the Emperour 462 Death how felt 411 Dead Men dealt with as being Alive 19 Dead bodies Boil'd Pounded and Drunk with Wine 153 Deceit and cunning in War hat'd by the Achaians 32 Deceit and Cunning allow'd in War 36 Deceit ought to be corrected in the greenest Years 146 Defeat of Leonidas 333 Democracy 159 Democritus his Face 514 Dependance upon Princes 233 Deserters punish'd with Death by the Romans 75 Desires of gathering Riches has no Limits 429 Devotion mix'd with an execrable Life 538 Devotion of the Heathen 544 Dexterity of a Man throwing a grain of Millet through the Eye of a Needle 526 Diogenes his Opinion concerning Men. 515 Difference betwixt Man and Man 439 Dioclesian retir'd to a private Life 456 Dioscorides Island the Inhabitants thereof Christians 544 Discipline of the Lacedaemonians 208 Discourse Pleasant and Witty 301 Disease of the Mind 376 Diseases of the Mind and Body cured with Pain and Grief 313 Disputes rouse Heresies 543 Diversion allow'd to Youth 255 Diviners punish'd when found false 328 Divinity and Philosophy have a saying to every thing 310 Divinity Queen and Regent 544 Dionysius his way of discovering Conspiracies made against him 188 Doublets Belly pieces as high as the Breast 502 Duty of Man to know himself 15 Dying's Resolution how ought to be digested 109 Dying's time 342 Dying's voluntary Resolution 405 Dying of Old Age very scarce 552 E EDict of January famous by the Civil Wars 285 Education of Children the greatest difficulty of Human Science 219 Edward the black Prince 1 Emperours obnoxious to Passions 444 Empire of Constantinople 347 Employments for a sedentary Life 384 Employments for a retired Life 385 Engines of Dionysius's Invention 495 Engines made by Archimedes 194 Enquiry's Office projected 351 Enterprizes Military 181 Errours of Opinions 529 Essays of Language 394 Events in War for the most part depend upon Fortune 486 Evil what is how enters Men. 402 Exercises fit for Youth 253 Exercises wherein Men are to proceed to the utmost limits of Pleasure 388 Extremity hurtful to Vertue 309 F FAintness from Frigidity 527 Faith of Military Men very uncertain 36 Family of obscure Extraction the most proper for Falsification 471 Farting and Organiz'd Farts 134 Fashion of some Nations of going Naked 353 Fashion's Inconstancy 503 Fashion of the French Court rules the whole Kingdom 459 Fathers not concern'd at the Death of their Children 422 Fear the strongest of all Passions 83 Fear of an Ensign Ibid. Fear of a Gentleman 84 Fear nails and fetters Men. Ibid. Fear throws men upon Valiant despair 85 Fear in its trouble exceeds all other Accidents Ibid. Fear is more insupportable than Death it self 86 Feast of Paulus Aemilius 520 Feeding upon human Flesh 156 Feet performing the Service of Hands 148 Felicity of Men's lives depends upon the Tranquility of their Spirits 9â— Fighting with Rapier and Cloak 503 Fire sent for a new-year's gift 154 Firmness of a Prince riding a rough Horse 501 Fish kept in lower Rooms 507 Fish's pre-eminence over Flesh Ibid. Flight in War granted by several Nations 66 Fondness and pernicious Education of Mothers 228 Flood 's strange alterations 318 Formularies of Faith establish'd by the Ancients 543 Fortitude what is 66 Fortune has a great share in many Arts. 180 Fortune's Inconstancy 345 Fortune often meets with Reason Ibid. Fortune sometimes seems to play upon Men. Ibid. Fortune playing the Physician 348 Fortune doth what Art can't do Ibid. Fortune corrects the counsels of Men. Ibid. Fortune surpasses the rules of Prudence 345 Fortunes benefits how ought to be Relished 44â— Foundtaion of Notre Dam la grande de Boitiers 469 Francisco Taverna pump'd up by King Franciâ— 51 France Antartick where Veleguignon landed 317 French wisdom early but of no continuance 251 Friendship of several kinds 286 Friendship begot by voluntary Liberty 287 Friendship its true Idea 294 Friendship true and perfect 295 Friendship common and ordinary 296 Friendship allows community of Goods 297 Friendship 's rare Example 298 Friendship perfect admits no Division 299 Friendship disunites all obligations Ibid. Friendship are scarce 302 Frost hard at the mouth of the Lake Maeotis 357 Fruits eaten after Dinner 505 G GAuls had Missible arms in abomination 494 Generals changing their habit upon the point of an Engagement 481 Generals richly cloath'd in the Battle 482 Generals obscurely arm'd in War Ibid. Gentlemens Duty towards those that come to visit them 69 Gifts interdicted betwixt Man and Wife 297 Gipsies wash their Children so soon as they are born 417 Glory and Curiosity Scourges of the Soul 283 Glory and repose inconsistent 389 God ought to be call'd upon but seldom 24 Golden Age. 324 Good and Evil. 50 Good one of a Thousand 372 Good Men free from all injuries 378 Goods of Fortune despised 382 Goods equally Evil to the unjust 448 Government of Anacharsis 456 Governour of a place how ought to behave himself in the time of a Seige 33 Governour of a besieged place may go out to parly 34 Great men ought to hide their Faults 451 Greatness of the King of Mexico 315 Greek and Latine may be bought cheaper than 't is commonly 268 Greek taught by tricks 270 Green-sickness 420 H HAirs pull'd off in great Sorrow 29 Hairs suffer'd to grow on one side and shav'd on the other 155 Hairs pincht off 504 Happiness of Men not to be counted before they are dead 87 Head uncover'd in the presence of God 356 Heads naked in all Seasons 355 Heads of the Aegyptians harder than those of the Persians 335 Heraclitus
the War against 〈◊〉 Enemies fansying it would much contribuâ—â— to the Continuation of the Successes he had always obtain'd in the War against them Iâ— like manner certain of the Indians in a Day of Battel with the Spaniards carried with them the Bones of one of their Captains iâ— consideration of the Victories they had for merly obtain'd under his Conduct And other People of the same new World do yet carry about with them in their Wars the Relicks of valiant Men who have dyed in Battel to incite their Courage and advance their Fortune of which Examples the first reserve nothing for the Tomb but the Reputation they have acquir'd by their former Atchievements but these proceed yet further and attribute a certain Power of Operation The last Act of Captain Bayard is of a much better Composition who finding himself wounded to Death with a Harquebuze Shot and being by his Friends importun'd to retire out of the Fight made Answer That he would not begin at the last Gasp to turn his Back to the Enemy and accordingly still fought on till feeling himself too faint and no longer able to sit his Horse he commanded his Steward to set him down against the Root of a Tree but so that he might die with his Face towards the Enemy which he also did I must yet add another Example equally remarkable for the present Consideration with any of the former The Emperour Maximilian great Grand-father to Philip the Second King of Spain was a Prince endowed throughout with great and extraordinary Qualities and amongst the rest with a singular Beauty of Person but had withall a Humour very contrary to that of other Princes who for the dispatch of their most Important Affairs convert their Close-stool into a Chair of State which was that he would never permit any of his Bed-Chamber in what familiar degree of Favour soever Modesty of Maximilian the Emperor to see him in that Posture and 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 Drawen so soon as he should be dead to which methinks he would have done well to have added that he should have been hoodwink'd too that put them on The Charge that Cyrus left with his Children Cyrus's Reverence to Religion Xenophâ—n 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 die in a very old Age of an excessive Pain of the Stone he spent the last Hours of his Life in an extraordinary Solicitude 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 withal 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 die content having obtain'd this Promise and appointed the Method and Order of his 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 Parsimony 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 not 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 referr 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 Cicero Tusc l. 1. 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 but it was a holy Saying of a Saint August de civit Dei Curatio funeris conditio Sepulturae pompa Exequiarum magis sunt vivorum solatia quà m subsidia mortuorum The Care of Funerals the Place of Sepulture and the Pomp 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 gratify 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
possible but that these well-Wishers to the Mathematicks in saying so much must sometimes stumble upon some Truths amongst an infinite Number of Lyes Adagium Cic. de Divin Quis est enim qui totum diem jaculans non aliquando conlineet 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 Flimflams 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 saith he you who think the Gods have no care of humane things what do you say by so many Person 's 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 relie too much upon these Fopperies I wish I had given any thing that I had with my own Eyes seen those two great Rareties the Book of Joachim the Calabrian Abbot which foretold all the future Popes their Names and Figures and that of the Emperour Leo which prophesied 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 abandon'd 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 Sence 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 enlightned as his was and so prepar'd by a continual exercise of Wisdom and Virtue 't is to be suppos'd those Inclinations of his though sudden and undigested were ever very important and worthy to be follow'd Every one finds in himself some Image of such Agitations of a prompt vehement and fortuitous Opinion 'T is I that am to allow them some Authority who attribute so little to our own Prudence and who also my self have had some weak in Reason but violent in Persuasion and Dissuasion which were most frequent with Socrates by which I have suffer'd my self to be carried away so fortunately and so much to my own Advantage that they might have been judg'd to have had something in them of a Divine Inspiration CHAP. XII Of Constancy THE Law of Resolution and Constancy does not imply that we ought not as much as in us lies to decline and to secure our selves from the Mischiefs and Inconveniences that threaten us nor consequently that we shall not fear lest they should surprize us on the contrary all decent and honest ways and means of securing our selves from Harms are not only permitted but moreover commendable and the Business of Constancy chiefly is bravely to stand to and stoutly to suffer those Inconveniences which are not otherwise possibly to be avoided There is no motion of Body nor any guard in the handling of Arms how irregular or ungraceful soever that we dislike or condemn if they serve to deceive or to defend the Blow that is made against us insomuch that several very warlike Nations have made use of a retiring and flying way of Fight as a thing of singular Advantage and by so doing have made their Backs more dangerous than their Faces to their Enemies Of which kind of Fighting the Turks yet retain something in their Practice of Arms to this day and Socrates in Plato laughs a Laches who had defin'd Fortitude to be at standing firm in their Ranks against the Enemy What says he would it then be a reputed Cowardice to overcome them by giving Ground urging at the same time the Authority of Homer who commends Aeneas for his Skill in running away And whereas Laches considering better on 't justifies his first Argument upon the Practice of the Scythians and in general all Cavalry whatever He again attacks him with the Example of the Lacedaemonian Foot a Nation of all other the most obstinate in maintaining their Ground who in all the Battel of Platea not being able to break into the Persian Phalanx unbethought themselves to disperse and retire that by the Enemies supposing they fled they might break and disunite that vast Body of Men in the Pursuit and by that Stratagem obtain'd the Victory As for the Scythians 't is said of them that when Darius went his Expedition to subdue them he sent by an Herald highly to reproach their King That he always retir'd before him and declin'd a Battel to which Indathyrsez for that was his Name return'd Answer That it was not for fear of him or of any Man living that he did so but that it was the way of Marching in practice with his Nation who had neither till'd Fields Cities nor Houses to defend or to fear the Enemy should make any Advantage of but that if he had such a Stomach to fight let him but come to view their ancient place of Sepulture and there he should have his Fill. Nevertheless as to what concerns Cannon Shot when a Body of Men are drawn up in the Face of a Train of Artillery as the Occasion of War does often require 't is unhandsome to quit their Post to avoid the Danger and a foolish thing to boot forasmuch as by reason of its Violence and Swiftness we account it inevitable and many a one by ducking steping aside and such other motions of Fear has been sufficiently laugh'd at by his Companions And yet in the Expedition that the Emperour Charles the Fifth made into Provâ—nce the Marquis de Guast going to discover the City of Arles and venturing to advance out of the Blind of a Wind-mill under favour of which he had made his Approach was perceiv'd by the Seigneurs de Bonneval and the
in times of War to punish even with Death those who are obstinate to defend a Place that is not tenible 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 Constabâ—e Monsieur de Montmorency having at the Siege of Pavie been order'd to pass the Tesine and to take up his Quarters in the Fauxburg 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 Dauphine in his Expedition beyond the Alpes 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 Countrey 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 Canon 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 Balance '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 practise 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 Ransom 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 Cowardice 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 Vervins who was sentenc'd to Death for having surrendred Bullen to the English openly 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 Cowardice 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 quam 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 Emperor Iulian 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 Battel 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 Cowardice 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 Ambassadors I Observe in all my Travels this Custom ever to learn something from the Information of those with home 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 nochiero ragionar de venti Al bifolco de i Tori le sue Pyaghe Conti'l guerrier conti'l Pastor gli armenti Ariosto Navita de ventis de tauris narrat arator Ememorat miles vulnera pastor oves Propert 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 Shepherds of their harmlss Flocks For it often falls out that on the contrary every one will rather choose to be prating of another Man's Province
Cause by an impulse from Heaven so that whole Armies and Nations have been struck with it Such a one was that which brought so wonderful a Desolation upon Carthage where nothing was to be heard but Voices and Outcries of Fear where the Inhabitants were seen to sally out of their Houses as to an Alarm and there to charge wound and kill one another as if they had been Enemies come to surprize their City All things were in strange Disorder and Fury till with Prayers and Sacrifices they had appeas'd their Gods and this is that they call a Panick Terror CHAP. XVIII That Men are not to judge of our Happiness till after Death Ouid. Met. l. 3. scilicet ultima semper Expectanda dies homini est dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet Mens last days still to be expected are E're we of them our Judgments do declare Nor can't of any one be rightly said That he is happy till he first be dead EVery one is acquainted with the Story of King Croesus to this purpose who being taken Prisoner by Cyrus and by him condemn'd to die as he was going to Execution cry'd out O Solon Solon which being presently reported to Cyrus and he sending to enquire of him what it meant Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the Advertisement Solon had formerly given him true to his Cost which was That men however Fortune may smile upon them could never be said to be happy till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their Lives by reason of the uncertainty and mutability of Humane things which upon very light and trivial occasions are subject to be totally chang'd into a quite contrary condition And therefore it was that Agesilâ—us made answer to one that was saying what a happy young man the King of Persâ—â— was to come so young to so mighty a Kingdom 'T is true said he but neither was Priam unhappy at his years In a short time of Kings of Macedon Successors to that mighty Alâ—xander were made Joyneâ—â— and Scriveners at Rome of a Tyrant of Sicily a Pedant at Corinth of a Conquerour of one half of the World and General of so many Armies a miserable Suppliant to the rascally Officers of a King of Aegypt So much the prolongation of five or Six Months of Life cost the Great and Noble Pâ—mpey and no longer 〈◊〉 than our Fathers daâ—s Ludovico Forza the tenth Duke of Millan whom all Italy had so long truckled under was seen to die a wretched Prisoner at Loches but not till he had lived ten Years in Captivity which was the worst part of his Fortune The fairest of all Queens Mary Qu. of Scots Widow to the greatest King in Europe did she not come to die by the hand of an Executioner Unworthy and barbarous Cruelty and a thousand more Examples there are of the same kind for it seems that as Storms and Tempests have a Malice to the proud and overtow'ring heights of our lofty Buildings there are also Spirits above that are envious of the Grandeurs here below Lucret. l. 5. Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam Obterit pulchros 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 Macrob. l. 2. c. 2. Nimirum hac die una plus vixi mihi quà m vivendum fuit I have livâ—d longer by this one day than I ought to have done And in this Sence 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 home Grandeurs and Powers Accidents of Quality are upon the Matter indifferent I am apt to think that he had some farther Aim and that his meaning was that the very Felicity of Life it self which depends upon the Tranquility 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 leasure 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 Lucret. l. 3. Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo Ejiciuntur eripitur persona manet res Then that 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 judge of all my foregoing Years To Death do I refer the Eisay 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 die handsomly that is patiently and without noise CHAP. XIX That to study Philosophy is to learn to die CIcero says That to study Philosophy is nothing but to prepare a Man's self to die 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 die 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 die 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 meerly verbal Transcurramus solertissimas nugas Let us skip over those learned and subtle Fooleries and Trifles Seneca Epist 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 Virtue 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 Privilege 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 Satiety 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 centre and concur in this own 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 Horat. l. 2. Od. 3. Omnes eodem cogimur omnium Versatur Urna serius ocyus 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 Cicero de finib l. 1. quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendet but it like Tantalâ—s 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 Hor. l. 3. Od. 1. non Sicula Dapeâ— 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 Palate from tasting these Regalio's Claud. Audit iter numeratque dies spatioque viarum Meâ—itur vitam torquetur peste futura He time and space computes by length of ways Sums up
of youthful Heat berest 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 whither'd Body and decrepid motion pleasantly answer'd Thou fansiest 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 Horat. l. 3. Od. 3. 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 wherewithal to defie Violence and Injustice and to contemn Prisons and Chains Horat. l. 1. Epist 16. in Manicis Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo Ipse Deus simul atque volam me solvet opinor Hoc sentit moriar mors ultima linea rerum 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 die 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 The contempt of Death a certain Foundation of Religion 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 all things included And therefore to lament and take on that we shall not be alive a hundred Years hence is the same Folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred Years ago Death is the beginning of another Life So did we weep and so much it cost us to enter into this and so did we put of our former Veil in entring into it Nothing can be grievous that is but once and is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so soon be dispatch'd Long Life and short are by Death made all one for there is no long nor short to things that are no more Aristotle tells us that there are certain little Beasts upon the Banks of the River Hypanis that never live above a day they which die at eight of the Clock in the Morning die in their Youth and those that die at five in the Evening in their extreamest Age Which of us would not laugh to see this Moment of Continuance put into the consideration of Weal or Woe The most and the least of ours in comparison of Eternity or yet to the Duration of Mountains Rivers Stars Trees and even of some Animals is no less ridiculous But Nature compels us to it Go out of this World says she as you enter'd into it the same Pass you made from Death to Life without Passion or Fear the same after the same manner repeat from Life to Death Your Death is a part of the Order of the Universe 't is a part of the Life of the World Lucret. l. 2. Inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt Mortals amongst themselves by turns do live And Life's bright Torch to the next Runner give Alluding to the Athenian Games wherein those that run a Race carried Torches in their Hands and the Race being done deliver'd them into the Hands of those who were to run next 'T is the Condition of your Creation Death is a part of you and whilst you endeavour to evade it you avoid your selves This very Being of yours that you now enjoy is equally divided betwixt Life and Death The day of your Birth is one days advance towards the Grave Senec. Her fur chor 3. Prima quae vitam dedit hora carpsit The Hour that gave of Life the benefit Did also a whole Hour shorten it Manil. Ast 4. Nascentes morimur finisque ab origine pendet As we are born we die and our Life's end Upon our Life's beginning does depend All the whole time you live you purloin from Life and live at the expence of Life it self the perpetual work of our whole Life is but to lay the foundation of Death you are in Death whilst you live because you still are after Death when you are no more alive Or if you had rather have it so you are dead after Life but dying all the while you live and Death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead If you have made your profit of Life you have had enough of it go your way satisfied Lucret. l. 3. Cur non ut
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 Back-side 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 seâ—f 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 Client it might be considerâ—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 inopportunely 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 wav who had done but well if she had endow'd this Member with some particular Privilege 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 * Videlicet the Pox 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 Apozem 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 Tholouse who being a valethdinary and 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 and 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 and finding these would do no good was fain to return to the old way A Woman fansying she had swallow'd a pin in a piece of Bread cry'd out of an intolerable pain in her Throat where she thought she felt it stick but an ingenious Fellow that was brought to her seeing no outward Tomour nor alteration supposing it only to be conceit taken at some Crust of Bread that had hurt her as it went down caus'd her to vomit and cunningly unseen threw a crooked Pin into the Bason which the Woman no sooner saw but believing she had cast it up she presently found her self eas'd of her pain I my self knew a Gentleman who having treated a great deal of good Company at his house three or four days after bragg'd in jest for there was no such thing that he had made them eat of a bak'd Cat at which a young Gentlewoman who had been at the Feast took such a horror that falling into a violent vomiting end a Fever there was no possible means to save her Even brute Beasts are also subject to the force of Imagination a well as we as is seen by Dogs who die of grief for the loss of their Masters and are seen to quest tremble and start as Horses will kick and whinney in their sleep Now all this may be attributed to the affinity and relation betwixt the Souls and Bodies of Brutes but 't is quite another thing when the Imagination works upon the Souls of rational men and not only to the prejudice of their own particular Bodies but of others also And as an infected Body communicates its Malady to those that approach or live near it as we see in the Plague the small Pox and sore Eyes that run through whole Families and Cities Ovid. Amor l. 2. Dum spectant oculi laesos laeduntur ipsi Multáque corporibus transitione nocent Viewing sore eyes eyes to be sore are brought And many ills are by transition caught So the Imagination being vehemently agitated darts out Infection capable of offending the stranger Object The Ancients had an opinion of certain Women of Scythia that being animated and inrag'd against any one they kill'd them only with their looks Tortoises and Ostriches hatch their Eggs with only looking on them which inferrs that their Eyes have in them some ejaculative vertue And the Eyes of Witches are said to be dangerous and hurtful Virg. Eclog 3. Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos What Eye it is
I do not know My tender Lambs bewitches so Magicians are no very good Authority for me but we experimentally see that Women impart the Marks of their Fancy to the Children they carry in their Wombs witness her that was brought to Bed of a Moor and there was presented to Charles the Emperour and King of Bohemia a Girl from about Pisa all over-rough and cover'd with Hair whom her Mother said to be so conceiv'd by reason of a Picture of St John Baptist that hung within the Curtains of her Bed It is the same with Beasts witness Jacob's ring-streaked and spotted Goats and Sheep and the Hares and Partridges that the Snow turns white upon the Mountains There was at my House a little while ago a Cat seen watching a Bird upon the Top of a Tree who for some time mutually fixing their Eyes upon one another the Bird at last let her self fall as dead into the Cats Claws either dazled and astonish'd by the Force of her own Imagination or drawn by some attractive Power of the Cat. Such as are addicted to the Pleasures of the Field have I make no question heard the Story of the Faulconer who having earnestly fix'd his Eyes upon a Kite in the Air lay'd a Wager that he would bring her down with the sole Power of his Sight and did so as it was said for the Tales I borrow I charge upon the Consciences of those from whom I have them The Discourses are my own and found themselves upon the Proofs of Reason not of Experience to which every one has Liberty to add his own Examples and who has none the Number and Varieties of Accidents consider'd let him not forbear to believe that these I set down are enough and if I do not apply them well let some other do it for me And also in the Subjects of which I treat viz. of our Manners and Motions the Testimonies and Instances I produce how fabulous soever provided they are possible serve as well as the true whether it has really happen'd or no at Rome or at Paris to Peter or John t is still within the Verge of Possibility and humane Capacity which serves me to good use and supplies me with Variety in the things I write I see and make my Advantage of it as well in Shadow as in Substance and amongst the various Examples I every where meet with in History I cull out the most rare and memorable to fit my own Turn There are some Authors whose only end and Design it is to give an Account of things that have hapned mine if I could arrive unto it should be to deliver what may come to pass There is a just Liberty allow'd in the Schools of supposing and contriving Simile's when they are at a Loss for them in their own Reading I do not however make any use of that Privilege and as to that Affair in superstitious Religion surpass all Historical Authority In the Examples which I here bring in of what I have heard read done or said I have forbid my self to dare to alter even the most light and indifferent Circumstances my Conscience does not falsifie one Tittle what my Ignorance may do I cannot say And this it is that makes me sometimes enter into Dispute with my own Thoughts whether or no a Divine or a Philosopher Men of so exact and tender Wisdom and Conscience are fit to write History for how can they stake their Reputation upon the Publick Faith how be responsible for the Opinions of Men they do not know And with what Assurance deliver their Conjectures for Current Pay Of Actions performâ—d before their own Eyes wherein several Persons were Actors they would be unwilling to give Evidence upon Oath before a Judge and cannot be so familiarly and thoroughly acquainted with any for whose Intentions they would become absolute Caution For my part I think it less hazardous to write things past than present by how much the Writer is only to give an Account of things every one knows he must of necessity borrow upon Trust I am sollicited to write the Affairs of my own Time by some who fansie I look upon them with an Eye less blinded with Prejudice or Partiality than another and have a clearer Insight into them by reason of the free Access Fortune has given me to the Heads of both Factions but they do not consider that to purchase the Glory of Salust I would not give my self the Trouble being a sworn Enemy as I am to all Obligation 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 Drug 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 could 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 I awyers and Officers of Justice by 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 Bosom and he will find his private Wishes spring and his secret Hopes grow up at anothers Expence Upon
the Crown where for the Regulation of Community in Goods and Estates observ'd in the Country certain Sovereign Magistrates have committed to them the universal Charge and over-seeing of the Agriculture and Distribution of the Fruits according to the Necessity of every one Where they lament the Death of Children and Feast at the Decease of old Men Where they lie ten or twelve in a Bed Men and their Wives together Where Women whose Husbands come to violent Ends may marry again and others not Where the servile Condition of Women is look'd upon with such Contempt that they kill all the native Females and buy Wives of their Neighbours to supply their Use Where Husbands may repudiate their Wives without shewing any Cause but Wives cannot part from their Husbands for what cause soever Where Husbands may sell their Wives in case of sterility Where they boyl the Bodies of their dead and afterwards pound them to a pulp which they mix with their Wine and drink it Where the most coveted Sepulture is to be eaten with Dogs and elsewhere by Birds Where they believe the Souls of the happy live in all manner of Liberty in delightful Fields furnish'd with all sorts of Delicacies and that it is those Souls repeating the words we utter which we call Echo Where they fight in the Water and shoot their Arrows with the most mortal aim swimming Where for a sign of Subjection they lift up their Shoulders and hang down their Heads and put off their shooes when they enter the King's Palace Where the Eunuchs who take charge of the Religious Women have moreover their Lips and Noses cut away and disguis'd that they may not be lov'd and the Priests put out their own Eyes to be better acquainted with their Daemons and the better to receive and retain their Oracles Where every one creates to himself a Deity of what he likes best according to his own Fancy the Hunter a Lyon or a Fox the Fisher some certain Fish and Idols of every Humane Action or Passion in which place the Sun the Moon and the Earth are the principal Deities and the form of taking an Oath is to touch the Earth looking up to Heaven and there both Flesh and Fish is eaten raw Where the greatest Oath they take is to swear by the Name of some dead Person of Reputation laying their hand upon his Tomb Where the New-years Gift the King sends every Year to the Princes his Subjects is Fire which being brought all the old Fire is put out and the neighbouring People are bound to fetch of the new every one for themselves upon pain of Treason Where when the King to betake himself wholly to Devotion retires from his Administration which often falls out his next Successor is oblig'd to do the same by which means the Right of the Kingdom devolves to the third in Succession Where they vary the Form of Government according to the seeming necessity of Affairs Depose the King when they think good substituting ancient men to govern in his stead and sometimes transferring it into the hands of the Common-People Where Men and Women are both Circumcis'd and also Baptiz'd Where the Souldier who in one or several Engagements has been so fortunate as to present seven of the Enemies Heads to the King is made noble where they live in that rare and singular Opinion of the Mortality of the Soul Where the Women are deliver'd without Pain or Fear Where the Women wear Copper Fetters upon both their Legs and if a Louse bite them are bound in Magnanimity to bite them again and dare not marry till first they have made their King a Tender of their Virginity if he please to accept it Where the ordinary way of Salutation is by putting a Finger down to the Earth and then pointing it up towards Heaven Where Men carry Burthens upon their Heads and Women on their Shoulders the Women pissing standing and the Men cowring down Where they send their Blood in token of Friendship and cense the men they would honour like Gods Where not only to the fourth but in any other remote Degree Kindred are not permitted to marry Where the Children are four Years at Nurse and sometimes twelve in which Place also it is accounted mortal to give the Child suck the first day after it is born Where the Correction of the male Children is peculiarly design ' d to the Fathers and to the Mothers of the Females the Punishment being to hang them by the Heels in the Smoak Where they eat all sorts of Herbs without other Scruple than of the Illness of the Smell Where all things are open the finest 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 abhorr 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 neighbâ—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 Custom 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 were in such Contempt that the poorest and most wretched Citizen would
gone that I see you no more and if you are wise choose henceforward honester Men for your Councellors in your Designs The Emperour Augustus being in Gaul 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 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 Battles both by Land and Sea And after having settled 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 Die 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 Caepiâ— 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 Cina 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 born 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 thou hast receiv'd thy Life with the better Faith and so departed from him Some time after he preferr'd him to the Consular Dignity complaining that he had not the Confidence to demand it had him ever after for his very great Friend and was at last made by him sole Heir to all his Estate Now from the time of this Accident which befell Augustus in the fortieth Year of his Age he never had any Conspiracy or Attempt against him and therein reap'd the due Reward of this his so generous and exemplary Clemency But it did not so well succeed with our Prince in the former Story his Moderation and Mercy not being sufficient so to secure him that he did not afterwards fall into the toils of the like Treason so vain and frivolous a thing is Humane Prudence and in spight of all our Projects Counsels and Precautions Fortune will still be Mistress of Events We repute Physicians fortunate when they hit upon a lucky Cure as if there was no other Art but theirs that could not stand upon its own Legs and whose Foundations are too weak to support its self upon its own Basis and as if no other Art stood in need of Fortunes Hand to assist in its Operations For my part I think of Physick as much good or ill as any one would have me for Thanks be to God we have no great Traffick together I am of a quite contrary Humour to other men for I always despise it but when I am sick instead of recanting or entring into Composition with it I begin yet more to hate nauseate and fear it telling them who importune me to enter into a course of Physick that they must give me time to recover my Strength and Health that I may be the better able to support and encounter the violence and danger of the Potion so that I still let Nature work supposing her to be sufficiently arm'd with Teeth and Clawâ— to defend her self from the Assaults of Infirmity and to uphold that Contexture the Dissolution of which she flies and abhors for I am afraid least instead of Assisting her when grappled and strugling with the Disease I should Assist her Adversary and procure new
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 Triumvirate 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 sguat and missâ—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 die once for all than to be perpetually at this pass he started 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 always 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 fort 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 Da 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 Rabelais 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 of elder times we see quite contrary men very proper for publick Business great Captains and great Statesmen 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 it is to do and to suffer and what Animals Law and Justice are Do they speak of the Magistrates 't is with a rude irreverent and indecent liberty Do they hear a Prince or a King commended for his Vertue they make no more of him than of a Shepherd Goat-herd or Neat-herd a lazy Corydon that busies himself only about milking and shearing his Herds and Flocks and that after the rudest manner Do you repute any man the greater for being Lord of two thousand Acres of Land they laugh at such a pitiful Pittance as laying claim themselves to the whole World for their possession Do you boast of your Nobility and Blood for being descended from seven rich successive Ancestors they will look upon you with an eye of Contempt as men who have not a right Idea of the Universal Image of Nature and that do not consider how many Predecessors every one of us has had Rich Poor Kings Slaves Greeks and Barbarians And though you were the fiftieth descent from Hercules they look upon it as a great vanity so highly to value this which is only a gift of Fortune And even so did the Vulgar sort of men nauseare them as men ignorant of the beginning of things where all things were common accusing them of Presumption and Insolence But this Platonick Picture is far different from that these Pedants are presented by For those were envied for raising themselves above the common sort of men for despising the ordinary Actions and Offices of Life for having assum'd a particular and inimitable way of living and for using a certain Method of Bumbaste and obsolete Language quite different from the ordinary way of speaking but these are contemn'd for being as much below the usual form as incapable of Publick Employment for leading a Life and conforming themselves to the mean and vile manners of the Vulgar Pacuvius Odi homines ignava opera Philosophica Sententia I hate men who talk like Philosophers but do worse than the most slothful of men For what concerns those true Philosophers I must needs say that if they were great in Science they were
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 Seneca Epist 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 Mical and Sicily ever oppose all their united Glories to the single Glory of the Discomfiture of King Leonidas and his Army at the Pass of Thermopylae Who ever ran with a more glorious Desire and greater Ambition to the wining than the Captain Ischolaâ— 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 Peloponnesus 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 Lacedaemonian 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 Aroadians 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 withall Eat their own Fathers and Grandfathers whose Flesh has serv'd to feed and nourish him Those 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 somuch 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 Matrimonial 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 Husband's Embraces but moreover carefully brought up the Children he had by her and assisted them in the Succession to their Father's 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 convers'd enough with Poetry to judge 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 knowledge 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 themselves to be deluded with desire of Novelty
as they are pleasant to us but by no means to lay our principal Foundation there This is no true one neither Nature nor Reason can allow it so to be and why therefore should we contrary to their Laws enslave our own contentment by giving it into the power of another To anticipate also the accidents of Fortune and to deprive ourselves of those things we have in our own power as several have done upon the account of Devotion and some Philosophers by discourse to serve a Mans self to lie hard to put out our own Eyes throw Wealth into the River and to seek our Grief the one by the uneasiness and 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 abstruse retirements Glorious and Exemplary Hor. l. 1. Epist 15. tuta parvula laudo Cum res deficiunt satis inter vilia fortis Verum ubi quid melius contigit unctius idem Hos sapere solos aio bene vivere quorum Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis Where plenty fails A secure competency I like well And love the Man disaster cannot quell 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 of-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 fansie 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 chiefest 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 Trunk at home to take when the Rheum 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 Numb and Stupisie 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 Hor. Ep. 1. 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 Sallust 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 Hor. Ep. 12. Democriti pecus edit agellos Cultaque dum peregre est animus sine corpore velox Democritus his Cattel 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 * Caninius Rufus 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 Per. Sat. 1. Usque 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 Gods 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
mistaken nor omitted without offence I find the same fault likewise with charging the fronts and Title Pages of the Books we commit to the Press with such a clutter of Titles CHAP. XL. That the Relish of Goods and Evils does in a great measure depend upon the opinion we have of them MEN says an ancient Greek Sentence are tormented with the Opinions they have of things and not by the things themselves It were a great Victory obtain'd for the relief of our miserable Humane Condition could this proposition be establish'd for certain and true throughout For if evils have no admission into us but by the judgment we our selves make of them it should seem that it is then in our own power to despise them or to turn them to good If things surrender themselves to our mercy why do we not convert and accommodate them to our advantage If what we call Evil and Torment 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 taste if it be in our power to give them a more grateful Relish and if Fortune simply provide 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 taste 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 untensils and instruments to conceive and to judge but the diversity of opinions we have or 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 Luc. l. 4. 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 thee 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 liv'd 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 Dranâ— 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 I aw 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 die than suffer himself to be persuaded that his Master could erre 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
in the spending or laying it up to his other more decent and quiet employments and that are more suitable both to his place and liking Plenty then and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them and Riches no more than Glory or Health have no more either Beauty or Pleasure than he is pleas'd to lend them by whom they are possest Every one is well or ill at ease according as he finds himself Not he whom the World believes but he who believes himself to be so is content and in him alone belief gives it self being and reality Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter and the seed which our Soul more powerfully than she turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and Soveraign Mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition All external accessions receive taste and Colour from the internal constitution as Cloaths warm us not with their Heat but our own which they are fit to cover and keep in and who would cover a cold body would do the same service for the Cold for so Snow and Ice are preserved And after the same manner that Study is a 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 cowardice 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 Apozem to eradicate the Evil let him at least take a Lenitive to ease it Opinio est quaedam effeminata ac levis Cicero Tusâ— lib. 2. nec in dolore magis quam eadem in voluptate qua quam liquescimus 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 transgress 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 Tasso Canto 10. La fama ch' invaghisce a un dolce suono Gli superbi mortali par ' si bella Eun echo un Sogno andzi d'un Sogno un ' ombra Cb ' ad ogni vento si dilegua sgombra Honour that with such an alluring sound Proud Mortals Charms and does appear so fair An Echo 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 cessat Aug. de Civit. Dei Because it ceases not to attack 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 rcoted in us that I dare not determine whether any one ever clearly sequestred himself from it or no. After you have said all and believed all has been said to its prejudice it creates so intestine an 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 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 Wisdom 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 his 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
Meat and Cloaths seems to be quite contrary to the end design'd The true way would be to beget in men a contempt of Silks and Gold as vain frivolous and useless whereas we augment to them the Honours and enhance the value of such things which sure is a very improper way to create a disgust For to enact the none but Princes shall eat Turbes shall weaâ— Velvet or Gold-Lace and interdict these things to the people what is it but to bring them into a greater esteem and to set every one more agog to eat and wear them Lâ—â— Kings a Gods name leave of their Ensignâ— of Grandeur they have others enough besides those excesses are more excusable in any other than a Prince We may learn by the Example of several Nations better ways of exteriour distinction of quality which truly I conceive to be very requisite in a State enow without fostering up this corruption and manifest in convenience to this effect 'T is strange how suddenly and with how much ease custom in these indifferent things establishes it self and becomes authority We had scarce worn Cloath a year in compliance with the Court for the Mourning of Henry the Second but that Silks were already grown into such contempt with every one that a man so clad was presently Concluded a Citizen The Silks were divided betwixt the Physicians and Chirurgeons and though all other people almost went in the same habit there was notwithstanding in one thing or other sufficient distinction of the calling and conditions of men How suddenly do greasy Chamois Doublets become the fashion in our Armies whilst all neatness and riches of habit fall into contempt Let Kings but lead the dance and begin to leave off this expence and in a Month the business will be done throughout the Kingdom without an Edict we shall all follow It sould be rather proclaim'd on the contrary that no one should wear Scarlet or Goldsmiths work but Whores and Tumblers Zeleucus with the like invention reclaim'd the corrupted manners of the Locrians Whose Laws 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 Embroidered Robe unless she was a profest and publick Whore The Bravo's and Russians 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 great 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 stand in this case for a Law Quicquid Principes faciunt Quinct Decla 4. praecipere videntur What Princes themselves do they seem to enjoyn 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 privilege 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 Vanish'd 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 Enterprises 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 Battle betwixt him and Darius slept so profoundly and so long in the Morning that Barmenio was forc'd to enter his Chamber and coming to his Bed-side 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 he Chamber heard him Snore The death of this Emperour has in its 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 Utica he fell into so found a sleep that they had him into the next Room and he whom he
victique neque his fuga nota neque illis They charg'd together and did so retreat The Victors and the vanquished nor yet The knack of running was unto the one Or to the other of the Parties known Their Battels were much better disputed Now adays there are nothing but Routs primus clamor atque impetus rem decernit The first shout or the first charge puts an end to the business And the Arms we choose to make use of in so great a hazard should be as much as possible at our own command Wherefore I should advise to choose them of the shortest sort and such of which we are able to give the best account A man may repose more confidence in a Sword he holds in his Hand than in a Bullet he discharges out of a Pistol wherein there must be a concurrence of several executions to make it perform its office the Powder the Stone and the Wheel if any of which fail it at lest endangers your Fortune A Man strikes much surer than the Air directs him Lucan l. 8. Et quo ferre velint permittere vulnera ventis Ensis habet vires gens quaecunque virorum et Bella gerit gladiis Mr. May ' s Trans Far off with Bows They shoot and where it lists the wind bestows Their wounds but Fight of Sword does strength require All Manly Nations the Sword fight desire But of that Weapon I shall speak more fully when I come to compare the Arms of the Ancients with those of modern use though by the way the astonishment of the ear abated which every one grows familiar with in a little time I look upon it as a Weapon of very little execution and hope we shall one day lay it aside That missile Weapon which the Italians formerly made use of both with Fire and without was much more terrible They called a certain kind of Javeline Armed at the point with an Iron three foot long that it might pierce through and through an Armed Man Phalarica which they sometimes in Field-service darted by hand sometimes from several sorts of Engines for the defence of beleagured 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 endamage the Assailant and that the Camp being as it were planted with these Flaming Truncheons should produce a common inconvenience to the whole crowd Virg. Aenid 9. 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 〈◊〉 They darted their Piles with so great violence as oft-times transfixt two Targets 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 Liv. l. 38. mare apartum incessantes coronas modici circuli magno ex intervallo loci assueti trajicere non capita modo hostium vulnerabant sed quem locum destinassent Culling 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 Id. Ibid. but the thunder of our Cannon also ad ictus moenium cum terribili sonitu editos pavor trepidatio coepit At the Battery of the Walls which is performed with a dreadful noise the defendants began to fear and tremble within The Gauls our Kinsmen in Asia abominated these treacherous missile Arms it being their use to fight with greater Bravery Hand to Hand Non tam patentibus plagis moventur Id. Ibid. ubi latior quam alitor plaga est etiam gloriosius se pugnare putant iidem quum aculeus sagittae aut glandis abditae introrsus tenui vulnere in speciem urit tum in rabiem pudorem tam parva perire pestes 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 the 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 Horse-back 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 custom nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use Saddles or Pads and they 〈◊〉 spise such as make use of those conveniencâ—â— 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 Aris with a Switch only and the Reins upon his Neck wâ—s common with the Massilians who rid their Horses without Saddle or Bridle Aeneid l. 4. Et gens quae nudo residens Massilia dorso Ora levi flectit froenorum 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 Reign begirt us round Equi sine froenis deformis
Opinion espoused to the expence of Life 406 Opinion gives value to things 424 Opinion of Pain 434 Opinions concerning good and Evil. 401 Oracles ceased before the coming of Jesus Christ 57 Osorius Historian 407 Over study spoils good Humour 387 Ovid's Metamorphosis 272 P PAin the last Evil. 410 Pain principally fear'd in Death 412 Pain the worst accident of our being 413 Pain suffer'd with impatience 414 Pain of child bearing 417 Pain endured at the expence of Life Ibid. Pain endured with obstinacy 418 Pain voluntarily endured to get Credit 420 Painting 180 Palate Science 519 Parly's time dangerous 37 Part acted by the Author in a Play 274 Parthians perform all they have to do on Horseback 490 Passions of the Soul steal the Pleasure of external conveniences 448 Peasants and Philosophers 530 Pedants despised 193 Pedant's pleasant answer 260 Pedantry contemptible 191 Peers Ecclesiastical oblig'd to assist the King in War 438 Penitence requires Penance 41 People going always bare-foot 356 Perfumes Exotick 531 Person belov'd preferr'd to the Lover 292 Perturbations how far allowed by the Stoicks to their Philosophers 68 Phalarica what sort of Arms. 493 Philosophers despised 192 Philosophy consists in Practice 258 Philosophy and her Study 92 Philosophy what is according to Plato 227 Philosophy rules humane actions 239 Philosophy despised with Men of understanding 243. Philosophy instructs Infancy 248 Philosophy formatrix of Iudgment and Manners 252 Philosophy banish'd out of the Holy Schools 445 Philosophical Qualities in Youth 233 Pity reputed a vice amongst the Stoicks 3 Place not tenible by the rules of War 72 Place of honour amongst the Ancients 507 Plato true Philosopher 258 Plato Sirnam'd Divine 521 Plato's belief injurious to the Gods 537 Plays acted by Princes 275 Plays of Children 147 Pleasures of Matrimony 310 Pleasures wheedle and caress to Strangle 387 Plenty and Indigence depend upon Opinion 443 Pliny's Judgment 280 Plutarch's Lives 235 Plutarch's Elegy 236 Poesie and its effects 213 Poesie recommended to Youth 255 Poesie above Rules and Reason 364 Poesie of the Ancients 526 Poesie of several Sorâ—â— 530 Poesie Gay 307 Poets and Rhimers 263 Poets Lyricks 249 Poets in greater number than Judges of Poesie 363 Poetick Raptures 180 Politicks of Lypsius 218 Pompey pardons a whole City on the acount of Zeno's Vertue 6 Pompey's Head presented to Caesar 366 Pompey's engagement with Caesar 482 Poor in the midst of Riches 427 Possession what it is 428 Poverty to be fear'd 413 Poverty sought after 4â—4 Praises of great Men. 394 Praises rejected 437 Prayer dictated to us from the mouth of God how to be used by us 536 Prayers in Secret 548 Prayers vain 546 Prayers Religious reconciling of our Selves to God can't enter into an impure Soul Ibid. Prayers and Supplications overcome Men. 4 Preparation to Death Necessary 105 Presumption 279 Princes advantage as common with Men of mean condition 456 Princes ought to despise Silks and Gold 458 Prisoners how used by the Barbarians 328 Prisoners constant resolution 335 Production of all things 323 Profit of one Man a loss to another 142 Prognostications vain and superstitious 60 Prognostications abolish'd by Christian Religion 58 Prophets and Priests punished for their false Saying 327 Psalms of David indiscreet use of them Interdicted 540 Pyrrhus's Head presented to Antigonus 366 Pyrrhus's Ambition 456 Python's great Courage 5 Q QValities required in an Historian 321 Qualities misbecoming Merit and Condition 393 R RAshness in Judgment 277 Reading of History 235 Reason Human. 151 Recommendation from whence proceeds 526 Recreation fit for Youth 253 Regulus ' s Parsimony 522 Relicks of St. Hilary 28 Relicks of Gervase and Protasius Ibid. Religion Christian needs not the Authority of Events 340 Repartee of a French Gentleman 150 Repentance 539 Reproaches against the enemy allowed in a Seige 480 Reputation forsaken 436 Respects due to the Royalty not to the King 454 Resolution and Constancy 65 Revenge against inanimated Creatures 29 Revenge of a King against God Ibid. Revenge of Augustus against Neptunus 30 Revenge of Thraces against Heaven Ibid. Revenge desired 47 Rhetrick a Lying and deceitful Art 517 Rhetrick useless and pernicious 517 Rich Man who is that 424 Riches contempt 157 Riches Illuminated by Prudence 430 Riding good for the Stomach 490 Rivers obnoxious to changes 319 Romances 272 S SAbinus ' s Life 417 Sacrifices of Human Bodies 315 Sadles or Pads 496 Sallets according to their Seasons 519 Sancho King of Navarre Sirnamed Trembling 527 Savages 322 Savage ' s Policy 324 Sawces 519 Scanderbeg Prince of Epirus 2 Scaevola ' s Constancy 418 Scepter heavy Burthen 449 Schools and Classes 254 School-masters how ought to behave themselves in Teaching their Scholars 222 Science softens the Courage 211 Science of a marvellous use 220 Science Steril 388 Scipio's confidence to a Barbarian 184 Scipio's great Acts due in part to Laelius 438 Scythians declining a Battle 66 Secret faithfully kept 41 Self murther 314 Senses judge of Pain 411 Sentiments of Beasts free and natural 415 Servitude voluntary 284 Severity of the Colleges 254 Severity enemy to Education 253 Severus spoke best ex Tempore 56 Shame causes Death 12 Shrine of St. Stephen 281 Silence and Modesty 230 Silk ouâ— of Fashion in France 454 Sire what Title 527 Sirnames glorious amongst the Ancients 521 Sirname of Great to Princes 522 Slings 494 Smell Good and Bad. 532 Smell simple and natural 533 Snows storms in Armenia 358 Snow used to cool Wine 506 Society of bad Men unfortunate 372 Socrates his Daemon 64 Solicitude of Reputation and Glory 435 Solitude what is 376 Solitary Life preferr'd to a voluptuâ—s way of Living 343 Solitude has the best pretence in those that have employed their flourishing Age in the Worldâ— Service 380 Solitude sought after on the Account of Devotion 385 Solitude obnoxious to Miscarriages 391 Sorrow called by the Italians Malignity 8 Sorrow hurtful to Men. Ibid. Sorrow Silences Men. 9 Sorrow proceeding from Love can't be Represented 10 Sorrow strikes Men dumb and Dead 11 Sovereign 524 Soul has not Settled limits 43 Soul looking upon things several ways 370 Soul is where she is busied 374 Souls fit for solitude and Retirement 381 Soul variable into all sorts of Forms 415 Soul the sole cause of her Condition 433 Soul discovered in all Motion 512 Soul colours things as she pleases 313 Soul ought to be pure at Prayer time 537 Sounding from whence proceeds 125 Spanish Body 420 Speaking fine 267 Spectacles profitable to the Society 275 Speech fit for Pleaders 54 Speech fit for Preachers Ibid. Stoick ' s State 69 Stoick's did allow to feed upon Carcases 330 Stories 396 Stratagems in War contrary to the Eldest Senatorâ— Practice 31 Study excessive hinders the Action of the Mind 192 Study and its advantages 226 Subjection Real and Effectual 454 Submission mollifies the Heart 1 Subtilties of Logick abuse 249 Suit of Arms under a Religious habit 421 Surprizes in War 33 Suspicion breeds jealously 183 Sweetness of