Selected quad for the lemma: war_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
war_n	caesar_n	great_a	pompey_n	2,212	5	10.9836	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52003	Entertainments of the cours: or, Academical conversations. Held upon the cours at Paris, by a cabal of the principal wits of that court. / Compiled by that eminent and now celebrated author, Monsieur de Marmet, Lord of Valcroissant. And rendered into English by Thomas Saintserf, Gent.; Entretiens du cours. English	Marmet, Melchior de, seigneur de Valcroissant.; St. Serfe, Thomas, Sir, fl. 1668.	1658 (1658)	Wing M701; ESTC R202859	101,018	264

the world and will last till the end and therefore it were in vain to wish that we had lived in another Age or to live in those which are to come to be exempt from its contagion and to be free from its malice The greatest Captain of Pharamonds time and who had most gifts of Nature and Wit had never yet so many as to equal the number of his enviers and the most unhappy Courtier of the last that shall be of our Kings will never suffer so many crosses as will paralel the rejoycings which have been made for the misfortunes which have befaln him Albeit you sustain said the Marquess that they who are envied for their vertue are envy-proof and that that which stains the reputation of others refines theirs yet it is not to be denied but that the envious are a sort of people which dim the splendor of honour and destroy in some sort the greatnesse of a high fame for they disguise the fairest actions with the habits of a foolish and blinde Fortune and by as the uprightness of a Soul how frank and generous soever and therefore their by-ways and practices are not to be neglected in regard they strike in absence at a distance and at unawares whereas other enemies are not so much to be feared because they are known and because time may have salved the wrongs they have received and in fine because we stand always upon our guard and with praecaution to prevent them But this curst race of Nature is never weary of persecuting us and does us more hurt with the tongue without touching us then an irreconcileable enemy would do if he had us under him with his sword at our throats This is very true indeed said Angelin and therefore was the war of the Greeks against the Trojans less cruel and shorter for that it began upon an injury then that of the Romans against the Carthaginians because both these Republicks had their several design to conquer the whole world and disputed for the decision of the Empire of the Drivers The great enmity between Caesar and Pompey proceeded likewise from nothing but envy the former envying the later for his good conduct in the government of the Commonwealth and the later the former for the felicity which accompanied him in war So that we see that the decay of that flourishing Republick began from the Civil Wars raised by envy And therefore to revenge our selves against these pernicious hornets who besiege our bodies a far off who suborn the clearest Consciences and betray the gallantest lives we must use an advantagious and estimable remedy against obtrectatory and ill grounded suspicions which destroy the reward of vertue and seem to blot it out of the souls of men I will be bold to say that revenge upon the envious is as laudible as it is sweet and facil for it consists but in continuing to do well and in striving to excel in so good a practice in regard that the vertue of their Neighbour gnaws and consumes them as rust doth Iron My dear Lord makes use of this stratagem and is not moved at all because he is envied notwithstanding what you have said for besides that he is worthy of it he is so well establisht in vertue and favour that he doth not believe that the vices of others can hurt him or the greatest storm shake him And therefore it is as much in vain for the envious to buz out their detractions and dart their private injuries against so firm a Soul as it was for the Pigmys and the Ruffian Thiodamas of Lydia to presume to wrestle with Hercules For before he undertakes any great designs or causes any of his orders to be executed he prepares his spirit for the censure of envy and sweetly perswades himself that the issue will make his blames turn into praises and that to desist from the pursuit of brave actions is the only means to support detraction His perseverance in the good opinion he gives of himself keeps his person in esteem as on the other side desistence and wavering might abate the good thoughts which men have of him The Court is a tempestuous Sea which violently tosses as well great Ships as small Barks and her floating waves shake the most weighty and solid hearts without sincking them Unlesse a man have profound wisdom without weaknesse and spot and make a perfect harmony thereof with constancy he cannot preserve himself there from shipwrack and come safe to the Port. As for the Sea billows and waves said the Marquesse I will shew you a very pleasant and good Letter from a Gentleman a friend of mine who is in the Fleet with a Brother of his who is Captain of a Gally wherein you shall see what he says of Sea-sicknesse wherewith he is furiously tormented This is the Letter and thus it says My Lord GOD blesse the Cow-stall and the Divel take the Element wherein a man makes his grave by falling Alas you may easily judge of the sad condition I am in by seeing my scribbling and this Letter so rumpled but I doubt whether it will be received by you as coming from a person who honours you so much as I do because I force my self to write to you and because I write to you when I am stomach-sick or whether it will draw so much sense of compassion from you in regard I am lying straight along without strength or pulse and with insupportable qualms and faintings In fine I am as miserable as the good King in the Scripture was in his greatest calamities save only that he was fain to lie upon a Dunghil and I lie upon a Satin-quilt but if he were pestred with vermin I am so as much as he if he wanted food my stomach against the order of Nature which abhors a vacuum is posting thither if he were forsaken by his friends my Brother and my friends as if they were about a grave instead of pitying my misfortune do nothing but laugh and scoff at it In a word it seems all one to me to be at the bottom of the Sea or here in the Gally and in regard a mans heart is the first which lives and the last which die it is to be believed that our bodies are deprived of life when we feel our hearts a dying As soon as I shall be able to reach a Port I will leave the Moveable for the Immoveable and the hazzard of the Water to expose my self to the rigor of all the other Elements and will remedy the inconveniences I now suffer after the manner of poor Mad-men Six foot of Land will cure me of these evils and then I will send you the Mercury of all we do in the liquid Field and give you as good an account of our affairs as of my own restitutions Just now came a billow and tost our Gally to the middle Region of the air threw me headlong against the Helmet overturn'd my Ink-horn and blew my