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
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
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
of which St. Augustine gives a very great proof upon his Adversaries 'T is a Conflict that is more decided by strength of Memory than the force of Reason We are to content our selves with the Light it pleases the Sun to communicate to us by Virtue of his Rays and who will lift up his Eyes to take in a greater let him not think it strange if for the reward of his presumption he there lose his sight Sapien. Cap. 9. v. 13. Quis hominum potest scire consilium Dei aut quis poterit cogitare quid velit Dominus Who amongst Men can know the Counsil of God or Who can think what the Will of the Lord is CHAP. XXXII That we are to avoid Pleasures even at the expence of Life I Had long ago Observ'd most of the Opinions of the Ancients to concur in this That iâ— is happy to Die when there is more ill than good in Living and that to preserve Life to our own Torment and Inconvenience is contrary to the very Rules of Nature as these old Laws instruct us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Happy is Death whenever it shall come To him to whom to Live is troublesome Whom Life does persecute with restless Spite May Honourably bid the World good Night And infinitely better 't is to Die Than to prolong a Life of Misery But to push this Contempt of Death so far as to employ it to the removing our selves from the danger of Coveting Honours Riches Dignities and other Favours and Goods as we call them of Fortune as if Reason were not sufficient to perswade us to avoid them without adding this new Injunction I had never seen it either enjoin'd or practis'd till this passage of Seneca fell into my hands who advising Lucilius a Man of great Power and Authority about the Emperour to alter his Voluptuous and Magnificent way of Living and to retire himself from this Worldly Vanity and Ambition to some Solitary Quiet and Philosophical Life and the other alledging some Difficulties I am of Opinion says he either that thou leave that Life or Life it self I would indeed advise thee to the gentle way and to untie rather than to break the Knot thou hast undiscreetly Knit provâ—ded that if it be not otherwise to be unti'd then resolutely break it There is no man so great a Coward that had nor rather once fall than to be always falling I should have found this Counsel conformable enough to the Stoicâ—l Roughness But it appears the more strange for being borrowed from Epicurus who writes the same thing upon the like occasion to Idominius And I think I have Observ'd something like it but with Christian Moderation a mongst our own People St. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers that famous Enemy of the Arian Heresie being in Syria had intelligence thither sent him that Abra his only Daughter whom he left at home under the Eye and Tuition of her Mother was sought in Marriage by the greatest Noblemen of the Country as being a Virgin Vertuously brought up Fair Rich and in the Flower of her Age whereupon he writ to her as it appears upon Record that she should remove her Affection from all those Pleasures and Advantages were propos'd unto her for he had in his Travels found out a much greater and more worthy Fortune for her a Husband of much greater Power and Magnificence that would present her with Robes and Jewels of inestimable value wherein his design was to dispossess her of the Appetite and use of Worldly delights to join her wholly to God But the nearest and most certain way to this being as he conceiv'd the Death of his Daughter he never ceas'd by Vows Prayers and Oâ—aisons to Beg of the Almighty that he would please to call her out of this World and to take her to himself as accordingly it came to pass for soon after his return she Died at which he exprest a singular Joy This seems to out do the other forasmuch as the applies himself to this means at the first sight which they only take subsidiarily and besides it was towards his only Daughter But I will not omit the latter end of this Story though it be from my purpose St. Hilary's Wife having understood from him how the Death of their Daughter was brought about by his desires and design and how much happier she was to he remov'd out of this World than to have stay'd in it conceiv'd so Lively an Apprehension of the Eternal and Heavenly Beatitude that she Begg'd of her Husband with the extreamest Importunity to do as much for her and God at their joint Request shortly after calling her to him it was a Death embrac'd on both sides with singular Content CHAP. XXXIII That Fortune is oftentimes Observ'd to Act by the Rule of Reason THe Inconstancy and various Motions of Fortune may reasonably make us expect she should present us with all sorts of Faces Can there be a more express Act of Justice than this The Duke of Valentenois having resolv'd to Poison Adrian Cardinal of Cornetto with whom Pope Alexander the Sixth his Father and himself were to go to Supper in the Vatican he sent before a Bottle of Poisoned Wine and withal strict Order to the Butler to keep it very safe The Pope being come before his Son and calling for Drink the Butler supposing this Wine had not been so strictly recommended to his Care but only upon the account of its Excellency presented it presently to the Pope and the Duke himself coming in presently after and being confident they had not meddled with his Bottle took also his Cup so that the Father Died immediately upon the place and the Son after having been long tormented with Sickness was reserv'd to another and a worse Fortune Sometimes she seems to play upon us just in the nick of an Affair Monsieur d' Estree at that time Guidon to Monsieur de Vendosme and Monsieur de Liques Lieutenant to the Company of the Duke of Ascot being both pertenders to the Sieur de Foungueselles his Sister though of several Parties as it oft falls out amongst Frontier Neighbours the Sieur de Liques carried her but on the same Day he was Married and which was worse before he went to Bed to his Wife the Bridegroom having a mind to break a Lance in honour of his new Bride went out to Skirmish near to St. Omers where the Sieur d' Estree proving the stronger took him Prisoner and the more to illustrate his Victory the Lady her self was fain Catullus Conjugis ante coacta novi dimittere collum Quam veniens una atque altera rursus hyems Noctibus in longis avidum saturasset amorem Of her fair Arms the Amorous Ring to break Which clung so fast to her new Spouse's Neck E're of two Winters many a friendly Night Had sated her Loves greedy Appetite to request him of Courtesie to deliver up his
that proceeded from her Liberality was there before he came to it and above a hundred Years before his Time He never in his own particular had any solid and essential Advantages for which he stood indebted to her Bounty She shew'd him Airy Honorary and Titular Favours without Substance She procur'd for him the Collar of the Order of St. Michael which when young he covered above all other things it being at that time the utmost mark of Honour of the French Nobless and very Rare But of all her Favours there was none with which he was so well pleas'd as an Authentick Bull of a Roman Burgess that was granted to him with great civility and bounty in a Journey he made to Rome which is transcrib'd in Form in the sixth Chapter of the third Book of his Essays Messieurs de Bourdeax elected him Mayor of their City being then out of the Kingdom and at Rome and yet more Remote from any such Expectation which made him excuse himself but that would not serve his turn and moreover the King interpos'd his Command 'T is an Office that ought to be look'd upon with the greatest Esteem as it has no other Perquisits and Benefits belonging to it than the meer honour of its Execution It lasts but two years but may by a second Election be continued longer though that rarely happens It was to him and had been so twice before once some years since to Monsieur de Lausac and more lately to Monsieur de Byron Mareschal of France in whose place he succeeded and lest his to Monsieur de Matiguon also Mareschal of France proud of so noble a Fraternity His Father a Man of great Honour and Equity had formerly also had the same Dignity All the Children his Wife brought died at Nurse saving Leonor an only Daughter whom he dispos'd in marriage some two Years before his Death The first printing of his Essaies was in the Year 1580 at which time the publick Applause gave him as he says a little more assurance than he expected He has since added but corrected nothing His Book having been always the same saving that upon every new Impression he took the Privilege to add something that the Buyer might not go away with his Hands quite empty His Person was strong and well knit his Faâ—e not fat but full his Complexion betwixt Jovial and Melancholick moderately Sanguine and hot his Constitution healthful and spritely rarely troubled with Diseases till he grew into Years that he begun to be afflicted with the Cholick and Stone As to the rest very obstinate in his hatred and contempt of Physicians Prescriptions an hereditary Antipathy his Father having liv'd threescore and fourteen Years his Grand-father threescore and nine and his great Grandfather almost fourscore Years without having ever tasted any sort of Medicine He died in the Year 1592 the 13th of September a very constant and Philosophical Death being aged fifty nine Years six Months and eleven Days and was buried at Bourdeaux in the Church of a Commendary of St. Anthony now given to the Religious Feuillantines where his Wife Francoise de la Cassaigne and his Daughter have erected for him an honourable Monument having like his Ancestors past over his Life and Death in the Catholick Religion The Contents of the Chapters of the first Book Ch. 1. THat Men by various ways arrive at the same End Chap. 2. Of Sorrow Chap. 3. That our Affâ—â—ctions carry themselves beyond Us. Chap. 4. That the Soul discharges her Passions upon false Objects where the true are wanting Chap. 5. Whether the Governour of a Place besieg'd ought himself to go out to parley Chap. 6. That the Hour of Parley is dangerous Chap. 7. That the Intention is Iudge of our Actions Chap. 8. Of Idleness Chap. 9. Of Lyars Chap. 10. Of Quick or Slow Speech Chap. 11. Of Prognostication Chap. 12. Of Constancy Chap. 13. The Ceremony of the Interview of Princes Chap. 14. That men are justly punish'd for being obstinate in the Defence of a Fort that is not in reason to be defended Chap. 15. Of the Punishment of Cowardice Chap. 16. A Proceeding of some Ambassadours Chap. 17. Of Fear Chap. 18. That Men are not to judge of our Happiness till after Death Chap. 19. That to study Philosophy is to learn to Die Chap. 20. Of the Force of Imagination Chap. 21. That the Profit of one Man is the Inconvenience of another Chap. 22. Of Custom and that we should not easily change a Law received Chap. 23. Various Events from the same Counsel Chap. 24. Of Pedantry Chap. 25. Of the Education of Children To Madam Diana of Foix Countess of Gurson Chap. 26. That it is folly to measure Truth and Errour by our own capacity Chap. 27. Of Friendship Chap. 28. Nine and twenty Sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie to Madam de Grammont Countess of Guisson Chap. 29. Of Moderation Chap. 30. Of Cannibals Chap. 31. That a Man is soberly to judge of Divine Ordinances Chap. 32. That we are to avoid Pleasures even at the expence of Life Chap. 33. That fortune is oftentimes observed to act by the Rule of Reason Chap. 34. Of one Defect in one Government Chap. 35. Of the Custom of wearing Clothes Chap. 36. Of Cato the younger Chap. 37. That we laugh and Cry for the same thing Chap. 38. Of Solitude Chap. 39. A Consideration upon Cicero Chap. 40. That the Relish of Goods and Evils does in a great Measure depend upon the Opinion we have of them Chap. 41. Not to communicate a Man's Honour Chap. 42. Of the Inequality amongst us Chap. 43. Of Sumptuary Laws Chap. 44. Of Sleep Chap. 45. Of the Battel of Dreux Chap. 46. Of Names Chap. 47. Of the Incertainty of our Iudgment Chap. 48. Of Horses drest to the Menage call'd Destrials Chap. 49. Of Ancient Customs Chap. 50. Of Democritus and Heraclitus Chap. 51. Of the Vanity of Words Chap. 52. Of the Parcimony of the Ancients Chap. 53. Of a Saying of Caesar Chap. 54. Of Vain Subtilties Chap. 55. Of Smells Chap. 56. Of Prayers Chap. 57. Of Age. A VINDICATION OF Montagne's Essays THe Essays of Michel de Montagne are justly ranked amongst Miscellaneous Books for they are on various subjects without order and connexion and the very body of the discourses has still a greater variety This sort of confusion does not however hinder people of all qualities to extol these Essays above all the Books that ever they read and they make them their chief study They think that other Miscellanies of ancient and modern Books are nothing but an unnecessary heap of quotations whereas we find in this authorities to the purpose intermixed with the Authors own thoughts which being bold and extraordinary are very effectual to cure men of their Weakness and Vanity and induce them to seek Virtue and Felicity by lawful means But because every body is not of this opinion we must take notice here of what is said against and
Contulit haud furto melior sed fortibus armis His Heart disdain'd to strike Orodes dead Or unseen basely wound him as he fled But gaining first his Front wheels round and there Bravely oppos'd himself to his Career And fighting Man to Man would let him see His Valour scorn'd both Odds and Policy CHAP. VII That the Intention is Judge of our Actions 'T is a Saying That Death discharges us of all our Obligations However I know some who have taken it in another Sence Henry the Seventh King of England articled with Don Philip Son to Maximilian the Emperour and Father to the Emperour Charles the Fifth when he had him upon English Ground that the said Philip should deliver up the Duke of Suffolk of the White Rose his mortal Enemy who was fled into the Low Countries into his Hands which Philip not knowing how to evade it accordingly promis'd to do but upon condition nevertheless that Henry should attempt nothing against the Life of the said Duke which during his own Life he perform'd but coming to die in his last Will commanded his Son to put him to Death immediately after his Decease And lately in the Tragedy that the Duke of Alva presented to us in the Persons of the two Counts Egmont and Horne at Brussels there were very remarkable Passages and one amongst the rest that the said Count Egmont upon the security of whose Word and Faith Count Horne had come and surrendred himself to the Duke of Alva earnestly entreated that he might first mount the Scaffold to the end that Death might disinage him from the Obligation he had pass'd to the other In which Case methinks Death did not acquit the former of his Promise and the second was satisfied in the good Intention of the other even though he had not died with him for we cannot be oblig'd beyond what we are able to perform by reason that the Effects and Intentions of what we promise are not at all in our Power and that indeed we are Masters of nothing but the Will in which by necessity all the Rules and whole Duty of Mankind is founded and establish'd And therefore Count â—gmont conceiving his Soul and will bound and indepted to his Promise although he had not the Power to make it good had doubtless been absolv'd of his Duty even though he had outliv'd the other but the King of England willfully and premeditately breaking his Faith was no more to be excus'd for deferring the Execution of his Infidelity till after his Death than Herodotus his Mason who having inviolably during the time of his Life kept the Secret of the treasure of the King of Aegypt his Master at his Death discover'd it to his Children I have taken notice of several in my time who convinc'd by their Consciences of unjustly detaining the Goods of another have endeavour'd to make amends by their Will and afther their Decease but they had as good do nothing as delude themselves both in taking so much time in so pressing an Affair and also in going about to repair an Injury with so little Demonstration of Resentment and Concern They owe over and above something of their own and by how much their Payment is more strict and incommodious to themselves by so much is their Restitution more perfect just and meritorious for Penitency requires Penance but they yet do worse than these who reserve the Declaration of a mortal Animofity against their Neighbour to the last Gasp having conceal'd it all the time of their Lives before wherein they declare to have little regard of their own Honour whilst they irritate the Party offended against their Memory and less to their Conscience not having the Power even out of Respect to Death it self to make their Malice die with them but extending the Life of their Hatred even beyond their own Unjust Judges who deferr Judgment to a time wherein they can have no Knowledge of the Cause For my part I shall take Care if I can that my Death discover nothing that my Life has not first openly manifested and publickly declar'd CHAP. VIII Of Idleness AS we see some Grounds that have long lain idle and untill'd when grown rank and fertile by rest to abound with and spend their Vertue in the Product of innumerable sorts of Weeds and wild Herbs that are unprofitable and of no wholesome use and that to make them perform their true Office we are to culvitate and prepare them for such Seeds as are proper for our Service And as we see Women that without the Knowledge of Men do sometimes of themselves bring forth inanimate and formless Lumps of Flesh but that to cause a natural and perfect Generation they are to be husbanded with another kind of Seed even so it is with Wits which if not applyed to some certain Study that may fix and restrain them run into a thousand Extravagancies and are eternally roving here and there in the inextricable Labyrinth of restless Imagination Aenâ—id l. 8. Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis Sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine Lunae Omnia pervolitat latè loca jamque sub auras Erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti Like as the quivering Reflection Of Fountain Waters when the Morning Sun Darts on the Bason or the Moon 's pale Beam Gives Light and Colour to the Captive Stream Whips with fantastick motion round the place And Walls and Roof strikes with its trembling Rays In which wild and irregular Agitation there is no Folly nor idle Fancy they do not light upon Hor. de Arte Poetica velut aegri somnia vanae Finguntur species Like Sick mens Dreams that from a troubled Brain Phantasms create ridiculous and vain The Soul that has no establish'd Limit to circumscribe it loses it self as the Epigrammatist says Martial lib. 7. Epig. 72. Quisquis ubique habitat maxime nusquam habitat He that lives every where does no where live When I lately retir'd my self to my own House with a Resolution as much as possibly I could to avoid all manner of Concern in Affair and to spends in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to Live I fansi'd I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure to entertain and divert it self which I also now hop'd it might the better be entrusted to do as being by Time and Observation become more settled and mature but I find Lucan l. 4. variam semper dant otia mentem Even in the most retir'd Estate Leasure it self does various Thoughts create that quite contrary it is like a Horse that has broke from his Rider who voluntarily runs into a much more violent Career than any Horseman would put him to and creates me so many Chimaera's and fantastick Monsters one upon another without Order or Design that the better at leisure to contemplate their Strangeness and Absurdity I have begun to commit them to Writing hoping
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
the number of his few sad days And his sad thoughts full of his fatal doom Can dream of nothing but the blow to come The end of our Race is Death 't is the necessary Object of our aim which if it fright us how is it possible to advance a step without a Fit of an Ague The Remedy the Vulgar use is not to think on 't but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness They must bridle the Ass by the Tail Lucret. l. 4. Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro He who the order of his steps has laid To light and natural motion retrograde 't is no wonder if he be often trap'd in the Pitfall They use to fright People with the very mention of Death and many cross themselves as it were the name of the Devil and because the making a mans Will is in reference to dying not a man will be perswaded to take a Pen in hand to that purpose till the Physician has pass'd sentence upon him and totally given him over and then betwixt Grief and Terror God knows in how fit a condition of Understanding he is to do it The Romans by reason that this poor syllable Death was observ'd to be so harsh to the Ears of the People and the sound so ominous had found out a way to soften and spin it out by a Periphrasis and instead of pronouncing bluntly such a one is dead to say such a one has liv'd or such a one has ceas'd to live for provided there was any mention of Life in the Case though past it carried yet some sound of Consolation And from them it is that we have borrow'd our expression of the late Monsieur such and such a one Peradventure as the Saying is the term we have liv'd is worth our money The Author's birth I was born betwixt eleven and twelve a clock in the Forenoon the last of February 1533. according to our Computation beginning the Year the first of January and it is now but just fifteen days since I was compleat nine and thirty years old I make account to live at least as many more In the mean time to trouble a mans self with the thought of a thing so far of is a sensless Foolery But what Young and Old die after the very same manner and no one departs out of Life otherwise than if he had but just before enter'd into it neither is any so old and decrepid who has heard of Methusalem that does not think he has yet twenty years of Constitution good at least Fool that thou art who has assur'd unto thee the term of Life Thou dependâ—st upon Physicians Tales and Stories but rather consult Experience and the fragility of humane Nature for according to the common course of things 't is long since that thou liv'dst by extraordinary Favour Thou hast already out-li'vd the ordinary term of Life and that it is so reckon up thy Acquaintance how many more have died before they arriv'd at thy Age than have attain'd unto it and of those who have ennobled their Lives by their Renown take but an Account and I dare lay a Wager thou wilt find more who have dyed before than after five and thirty years of age It is full both of Reason and Piety too to take Example by the Humanity of Jesus Christ himself who ended his Life at three and thirty years The greatest man that ever was no more than a man Alexander died also at the same Age. How many several ways has Death to surprize us Hor. l. 2. Od. 13. Quid quisque vitet nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas Man fain would shun but 't is not in his Power T'evade the dangers of each threatning hour To omit Fevers and Pleurisies who would ever have imagin'd that a Duke of Britanny should be press'd to death in a Crow'd as that Duke was at the entry of Pope Clement into Lyons Have we not seen one of our * Henry II. of France running against Montgomery 2. Philip the eldest son of Lewis the Gross the 40th King of France Kings kill'd at a Tilting and did not one of his Ancestors die by the justle of a Hog Aeschylus being threatned with the fall of a house was to much purpose so circumspect to avoid that danger when he was knock'd o' th' head by a Tortoise-shell falling out of an Eagles Talons in the Fields Another was choak'd with a Grape-stone an Emperour kill'd with the scratch of a Comb in combing his Head Aemilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold and Aufidius with a justle against the door as he entred the Council Chamber And betwixt the very Thighs of Women Corâ—elius Gallus the Prator Tigillinus Captain of the Watch at Rome Ludovico Son of Guido de Gonzaga Marquis of Mantua and of worse example Speusippus a Platonick Philosopher and one of our Popes The poor Judge Bebiâ—â— whilst he repriv'd a Criminal for eight days only was himself condemn'd to death and his own day of Life was expir'd Whilst Caius Julius the Physician was anointing the Eyes of a Patient Death clos'd his own and if I may bring in an Example of my own Bloud A Brother of mine Captain St. Martin a young man of three and twenty years old who had already given sufficient testimomy of his Valour playing a match at Tennis receiv'd a blow of a Ball a little above his right Ear which though it was without any manner of sign of Wound or depression of the Skull and though he took no great notice of it nor so much as sate down to repose himself he nevertheless died within five or six hours after of an Apoplexy occasion'd by that blow Which so frequent and common Examples passing every day before our Eyes how is it possible a man should disingage himself from the thought of Death or avoid fansying that it has us every moment by the Collar What matter is it you will say which way it comes to pass provided a man does not terrifie himself with the expectation For my part I am of this mind that if a man could by any means avoid it though by creeping under a Calves skin I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift all I aim at is to pass my time pleasantly and without any great Reproach and the Recreations that most contribute to it I take hold of as to the rest as little glorious and exemplary as you would desire Hâ—raâ—e Epist 2 l. 2. praetulerim dâ—lirus inersque videri Dum mea dâ—lectant mâ—la me vel deni fallant Quà m sapere ringi A Fool or Coward let me censur'd be Whilst either Vice does please or cozen me Rather than be thought wise and â—eel the smart Of a perpetual aking anxious Heart But t is folly to think of doing any thing that way They go they come they gallop and dance and not a word of Death All
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
plenus vitae conviva recedis Why should'st thou not go like a full gorg'd Guest Sated with Life as he is with a Feast If you have not known how to make the best use of it and if it was unprofitable to you what need you care to lose it to what end would you desire longer to keep it Ibid. cur amplius addere quaeris Rursum quod pereat malè ingratum occidat omne And why renew thy time to what intent Live o'er again a Life that was ill spent Life in it self is neither good nor evil it is the Scene of good or evil as you make it and if you have liv'd a day you have seen all one day is equal and like to all other days there is no other Light no other Shade this very Sun this Moon these very Stars this very Order and Revolution of things is the same your Ancestors enjoy'd and that shall also entertain your Posterity Lucret. vel Manil. Non alium videre patres aliumve nepotes Aspicient Your Grandsires saw no other things of old Nor shall your Nephews other things behold And come the worst that can come the distribution and variety of all the Acts of my Comedy is perform'd in a Year If you have observ'd the Revolution of the four Seasons they comprehend the Infancy Youth Virility and old Age of the World The Year has play'd his part and knows no other way has no new Farce but must begin and repeat the same again it will always be the same thing Lucret. l. 3. Versamur ibidem atque insumus usque Where still we plot and still contrive in vain For in the same state still we do remain Vir. Georg. l. 2. Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus By its own footsteps led the Year doth bring Both ends together in an annual Ring Time is not resolv'd to create you any new Recreations Lucret. l. 3. Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque Quod placeat nihil est eadem sunt omnia semper More pleasures than are made time will not frame For to all times all things shall be the same Give place to others as others have given place to you Equality is the Soul of Equity Who can complain of being comprehended in the same Destiny wherein all things are involv'd Besides live as long as you can you shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to lie dead in the Grave 't is all to no purpose you shall be every whit as long in the condition you so much fear as if you had died at Nurse Ibidem licet quot vis vivendo vincere secla Mors aeterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit And live as many Ages as you will Death ne'ertheless shall be eternal still And yet I will place you in such a condition as you shall have no reason to be displeased Ibidem In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te Qui pâ—ssit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum Stansque jacentem When dead a living self thou canst not have Or to lament or trample on thy grave Nor shall you so much as wish for the Life you are so concern'd about Ibidem Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum Life nor our selves we wish in that Estate Nor Thoughts of what we were at first create Death were less to be fear'd than nothing if there could be any thing less than nothing Ibidem multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus If less than nothing any thing can shew Death then would both appear and would be so Neither can it any way concern you whether you are living or dead living by reason that you are still in being dead because you are no more Moreover no one dies before his Hour and the Time you leave behind was no more yours than that was laps'd and gone before you came into the World nor does it any more concern you Ibidem Respice enim quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas Temporis aeterni fuerit Look back and tho Times past eternal were In those before us yet we had no share Where-ever your Life ends it is all there neither does the Utility of living consist in the length of days but in the well husbanding and improving of Time and such an one may have been who has longer continued in the World than the ordinary Age of Man that has yet liv'd but a little while Make use of Time while it is present with you It depends upon your Will and not upon the number of Days to have a sufficient length of Life Is it possible you can imagine ever to arrive at the Place towards which you are continually going and yet there is no Journey but hath its end But if Company will make it more pleasant or more easie to you does not all the World go the self same way Ibidem omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur When thou art dead let this thy Comfort be That all the World by turn must follow thee Does not all the World dance the same Brawl that you do Is there any thing that does not grow old as well as you A thousand Men a thousand Animals and a thousand other Creatures die at the same moment that you expire Lucret. l. 2. Nam nox nulla diem neque noctem aurora secuta est Quae non audierit mistos vagitibus aegris Ploratus mortis comites funeris atri No Night suceeds the Day nor Mornings Light Rises to chase the sullen Shades of Night Wherein there is not heard the dismal Groans Of dying Men mix'd with the woful moans Of living Friends as also with the Cries And Dirges sitting fun'ral Obsequies To what end should you endeavour to avoid unless there were a possibility to evade it you have seen Examples enough of those who have received so great a benefit by Dying as thereby to be manifestly deliver'd from infallible Miseries but have you Talkt with any of those who have feared a Disadvantage by it It must therefore needs be very foolish to condemn a thing you neither experimented in your own Person nor by that of any other Why says Nature dost thou complain of me and Destiny Do we do thee any wrong Is it for thee to govern us or for us to dispose of thee Though peradventure thy Age may not be accomplish'd yet thy Life is A Man of low Stature is as much a man as a Gyant neither Men nor their Lives are measur'd by the Ell. Chiron refus'd to be immortal when he was acquainted with the Conditions under which he was to enjoy it by the God of time it self and its Duration his Father Saturn Do but seriously consider how much more insupportable an immortal and painful Life would
be to man than what I have already design'd him If you had not Death to ease you of your Pains and Cares you would eternally curse me for having depriv'd you of the Benefit of Dying I have 't is true mixt a little Bitterness with it to the end that seeing of what Conveniency and Use it is you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it and that you might be so establish'd in this Moderation as neither to nauseate Life nor have an Antipathy for dying which I have decreed you shall once do I have temper'd the one and the other betwixt Pleasure and Pain and t was I that first taught Thales the most eminent of all your Sages that to Live and to Die were indifferent which made him very wisely answer him who ask'd him Why then did he not die because says he it is indifferent The Elements of Water Earth Fire and Air and the other Parts of this Creation of thine are no more the Instruments of thy Life than they are of thy Death Why dost thou fear thy last day it contributes no more to thy dissolution than every one of the rest The last Step is not the cause of lassitude it does but confess it Every Day travels towards Death the last only arrives at it These are the good Lessons our Mother Nature teaches I have often consider'd with my self whence it should proceed that in War the Image of Death whether we look upon it as to our own particular danger or that of another should without Comparison appear less dreadful than at home in our own Houses for if it were not so it would be an Army of whining Milk-sops and that being still in all Places the same there should be notwithstanding much more Assurance in Peasants and the meaner sort of People than others of better Quality and Education and I do verily believe that it is those terrible Ceremonies and Preparations wherewith we set it out that more terrifie us than the thing it self a new quite contrary way of living the Cries of Mothers Wives and Children the Visits of astonish'd and afflicted Friends the Attendance of pale and blubber'd Servants a dark Room set round with hurning Tapers our Beds environed with Physicians and Divines in sum nothing but Ghostliness and Horror round about us render it so formidable that a Man almost fansies himself dead and buried already Children are afraid even of those they love best and are best acquainted with when disguised in a Vizor and so are we the Vizor must be removed as well from Things as Persons which being taken away we shall find nothing underneath but the very same Death that a mean Servant or a poor Chamber-maid died a day or two ago without any manner of Apprehension or Concern Happy therefore is the Death that deprives us of the leisure to prepare things requisite for this unnecessary Pomp a Pomp that only renders that more terrible which ought not to be fear'd and that no Man upon Earth can possibly avoid CHAP. XX. Of the Force of imagination FOrtis imaginatio generat casum Axion Scholast A strong Imagination begets Accident say the School-men I am one of those who are most sensible of the Power of Imagination Every one is justled but some are overthrown by it It has a very great Impression upon me and I make it my Business to avoid wanting force to resist it I could live by the sole help of heathful and jolly Company The very sight of anothers Pain does materially work upon me and I naturally usurp the Sense of a third Person to share with him in his Torment A perpetual Cough in another tickles my Lungs and Throat I more unwillingly visit the sick I love and am by Duty interested to look after than those I care not for and from whom I have no expectation I take possession of the Disease I am concern'd at and lay it too much to heart and do not at all wonder that Fancy should distribute Fevers and sometimes kill such as allow too much Scope and are too willing to entertain it Simon Thomas was a great Physician of his time I remember that hapning one day at Tholouze to meet him at a rich old Fellows House who was troubled with naughty Lungs and discoursing with his Patient about the method of his Cure he told him that one thing which would be very conducing to it was to give me such Occasion to be pleased with his Company that I might come often to see him by which means and by fixing his Eyes upon the Freshness of my Complexion and his Imagination upon the Sprightliest and Vigour that glowed in my Youth and possessing all his Senses with the flourishing Age wherein I then was his Habit of Body might peradventure be amended but he forgot to say that mine at the same time might be made worse Gallus Vibius so long cudgell'd his Brains to find out the Essence and Motions of Folly till by the Inquisition in the end he went directly out of his Wits and to such a Degree that he could never after recover his Judgment and he might brag that he was become a Fool by too much Wisdom Some there are who thorough Fear prevent the Hangman like him whose Eyes being unbound to have his Pardon read to him was found stark dead upon the Scaffold by the Stroak of Imagination Imagination occasions Diseases and Death We start tremble turn pale and blush as we are variously mov'd by Imagination and being a-bed feel our Bodies agitated with its Power to that degree as even sometimes to Expire And boyling Youth when fast asleep grows so warm with Fancy as in a Dream to satisfie amorous Desires Lucret. l. 4. Ut quasi transactis saepe omnibus rebus profundant Fluminis ingentes fluctus vestemque cruentent Who fansie gulling Lyes his enflam'd Mind Lays his Loves Tribute there where not design'd Although it be no new thing to see Horns grown in a Night on the Fore-head of one that had none when he went to Bed notwithstanding what besell Cyppus a noble Roman is very râ—â—merable who having one day been a very deligâ—â—d Spectator of a Bull-baiting and having all the night dreamt that he had Horns on his Head did by the Force of Imagination really cause them to grow there Passion made the Son of Croesus to speak who was born dumb by that means supplying him with so necessary a Faculty which Nature had deny'd him And Antiochus sell into a Fever enflam'd with the Beauty of Stratonissa too deeply imprinted in his Soul Pliny pretends to have seen Lucius Cressitius who from a Woman was turn'd into a Man upon her very Wedding day Pontanus and others report the like Metamorphoses that in these latter days have hapned in Italy and through the vehement Desire of him and his Mother Ovid. Vota puer sâ—lvit quae foemina voverat Iphis. Iphis a Boy the Vow desray'd That he had
here By thy sweet Conversation nourish'd were With thee when dying my good Fortune fled And in thy Grave my Soul was buried The Muses at thy Funerals I forsook And of thy Joy my leave forever took Dearer than Life am I so wretched then Never to see nor speak to thee agen Nor hear thy Voice now frozen up by Death Yet will I Love thee to my latest Breadth But let us hear a little Boy of Sixteen speak In this place I did once intend to have inserted those Memoirs upon that famous Edict of January But being I since find that they are already Printed and with a malicious design by some who make it their business to molest and endeavour to subvert the state of our Government not caring whether they mend and reform it or no and that they have confounded this Writing of his with others of their own Leven Apology for Estienne de Boetie I desisted from that purpose But that the Memory of the Father may not be interested nor suffer with such as could not come near hand to be acquainted with his Principles I here give them truly to understand that it was writ by him in his very green Years and that by way of Exercise only as a common Theme that has been tumbled and tost by a Thousand Writers I make no question but that he himself believ'd what he writ being so Consciencious that way that he would not so much as lye in jest and do moreover know that could it have been in his own Choice he had rather have been Born at Venice than at Soarlac and he had reason But he had another Maxim Soveraignly imprinted in his Soul very Religiously to Obey and submit to the Laws under which he was Born There never was a better Citizen more affectionate to his Country nor a greater Enemy to all the Commotions and Innovations of his time So that he would doubtless much rather have employ'd his Talent to the extinguishing of those Civil Flames than have added any Fewel to them For he had a Mind fashion'd to the Model of better Ages But in exchange of this Serious Piece I will present you with another of a more Gay and Frolick Air from the same Hand and Writ at the same Age. CHAP. XXVIII Nine and Twenty Sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie to Madam de Grammont Countess of Guisson MAdam I offer to your Ladiship nothing of mine either because it is already yours or because I find nothing in my Writings worthy of you But I have a great desire that these Verses into what part of the World soever they may travel may carry your Name in the Front for the Honour will accrue to them by having the great Corisanda de Andonis for their safe Conduct I conceive this present Madam so much the more proper for you both by reason there are few Ladies in France who are so good Judges of Poetry and make so good use of it as you do as also that there is none who can give it that Spirit and Life your Ladyship does by that incomparable Voice Nature has added to your other perfections you will find Madam that these Verses deserve your esteem and will I dare say concur with me in this that Gascony never yielded more invention finer Expression or that more evidence themselves to flow from a Masters hand And be not Jealous that you have but the remainder of what I Publisht some Years since under the Name of Monsieur de Foix your brave Kinsman for certainly these have something in them more spritely and luxuriant as being Writ in a greener Youth and enflam'd with the Noble Ardour that I will tell your Ladyship in your Ear. The other were Writ since when he was a Suitor in the honour of his Wife already â—elishing of I know not what Matrimonial Coldness And for my part I am of the same opinion with those who hold that Poesie appears no where so Gay as in a wanton and irregular Subject These Nine and Twenty Sonnets that were inserted here are since Printed with his other Works CHAP. XXIX Of Moderation AS if we had an infectious Touch we by our manner of handling corrupt things that in themselves are laudable and good We may grasp Vertue so hard till it become Vicious if we embrace it too streight and with too violent a desire Those who say there is never any excess in Vertue for as much as it is no Vertue when it once becomes excess only play upon words Horace l. 1. Epist 6. Insani sapiens nomen ferat aequus iniqui Ultra quam satis est virtutem si petat ipsam The Wise for Mad the Just for Unjust pass When more than needs ev'n Vertue they embrace This is a subtle consideration in Philosophy A Man may both be too much in Love with Vertue and be excessive in a just Action Holy Writ agrees with this Be not Wiser than you should but be soberly Wise * 'T is like he means Henry the 3d. of France I have known a great Man prejudice thè Opinion Men had of his Devotion by pretending to be devout beyond all Examples of others of his condition I Love temperate and moderate Natures An immoderate Zeal even to that which is good though it does not offend does astonish me and puts me to study what Name to give it Neither the Mother of Pausanias who was the first instructer of her Son's process and threw the first stone towards his Death Nor Posthumus the Dictator who put his Son to Death whom the Ardour of Youth had fortunately pusht upon the Enemy a little more advanc'd than the rest of his Squadron do appear to me so just as strange and I should neither advise nor like to follow so Savage a Vertue and that costs so dear The Archer that shoots over misses as well as he that falls short and 't is equally troublesome to my sight to look up at a great Light and to look down into a dark Abyss Callicles in Plato says That the extremity of Philosophy is hurtful and advises not to dive into it beyond the limits of Profit that taken moderately it is pleasant and useful but that in the end it renders a Man Brutish and Vicious A Contemner of Religion and the common Laws an Enemy to civil Conversation and all Humane Pleasures incapable of all Publick Administration unfit either to assist others or to relieve himself and a fit Object for all sorts of Injuries and Affronts without remedy or satisfaction He says true for in its Excess it enslaves our Natural Freedom and by an impertinent subtilty leads us out of the fair and beaten way that Nature has plain'd out for us The Love we bear to our Wives is very lawful and yet Theology thinks fit to curb and restrain it As I remember I have read in one place of St. Thomas of Aquin where he condemns Marriages within any of the forbidden degrees for this
main Land beyond their Mountains to which they go Naked and without other Arms than their Bows and Wooden-Swords fashion'd at one end like the head of a Javelin The Obstinacy of their Battels is wonderful and never end without great effusion of Blood For as to running away they know not what it is Every one for a Trophy brings home the head of an Enemy he has Kill'd which he fixes over the Door of his House After having a long time treated their Prisoners very well and given them all the Regalia's they can think of he to whom the Prisoner belongs invites a great Assembly of his Kindred and Friends who being come he ties a Rope to one of the Arms of the Prisoner of which at a distance out of his reach he holds the one end himself and gives to the Friend he Loves best the other Arm to hold after the same manner which being done they two in the presence of all the Assembly dispatch him with their Swords After that they Roast him Eat him amongst them and send some Chops to their absent Friends which nevertheless they do not do as some think for Nourishment as the Scythians anciently did but as a representation of an extream Revenge as will appear by this That having observ'd the Portugals who were in League with their Enemies to inflict another sort of Death upon any of them they took Prisoners Which was to set them up to the Girdle in the Earth to shoot at the remaining part till it was stuck full of Arrows and then to hang them They that thought those People of the other World as those who had sown the knowledge of a great many Vices amongst their Neighbours and who were much greater Masters in all sorts of Mischief than they did not exercise this sort of Revenge without Mystery and that it must needs be more painful than theirs and so began to leave their old way and to follow this I am not sorry that we should here take notice of the Barbarous Horrour of so Cruel an Action but that seeing so clearly into their faults we should be so blind in our own For I conceive there is more Barbarity in Eating a Man Alive than when he is Dead in tearing a Body Limb from Limb by Racks and Torments that is yet in perfect Sense in Roasting it by degrees causing it to be bit and worried by Dogs and Swine as we have not only read but lately seen not amongst inveterate and mortal Enemies but Neighbours and fellow Citizens and which is worse under colour of Piety and Religion than to Roast and Eat him after he is Dead Chrysippus and Zeno the Two Heads of the Stoical Sect were of Opinion That there was no hurt in making use of our Dead Carcasses in what kind soever for our necessity and in feeding upon them too as our Ancestors who being Besieged by Caesar in the City Alexia resolv'd to sustain the Famine of the Siege with the Bodies of their Old Men Women and other Persons who were incapable of bearing Arms. Javenal Sat. 15. Vascones fama est alimentis talibus usi Produxere animas 'T is said the Gascons with such Meats as these In time of Siege their Hunger did appease And the Physicians make no Bones of employing it to all sorts of use that is either to apply it outwardly or to give it inwardly for the health of the Patient but there never was any Opinion so irregular as to excuse Treachery Disloyalty Tyranny and Cruelty which are our familiar Vices We may then call these People Barbarous in respect to the Rules of Reason but not in respect to our selves who in all sorts of Barbarity exceed them Their Wars are throughout Noble and Generous and carry as much Excuse and fair Pretence as their Humane Disease is capable of having with them no other foundation than the sole Jealousie of Vertue Their Disputes are not for the Conquest of new Lands those they already possess being so fruitful by Nature as to supply them without Labour or Concern with all things necessary in such abundance that they have no need to enlarge their Borders And they are moreover happy in this that they only covet so much as their natural necessities require all beyond that is superfluous to them Men of the same Age generally call one another Brothers those who are younger Sons and Daughters and the old Men are Fathers to all These leave to their Heirs in common this full possession of Goods without any manner of Division or other Title than what Nature bestows upon her Creatures in bringing them into the World If their Neighbours pass over the Mountains and come to assault them and obtain a Victory all the Victors gain by it is Glory only and the advantage of having prov'd themselves the better in Valour and Vertue for they never meddle with the Goods of the Conquer'd but presently return into their own Country where they have no want of any thing necessary nor of this greatest of all Goods to know happily how to enjoy their Condition and to be Content And these in turn do the same They demand of their Prisoners soners no other Ransom than acknowledgment that they are overcome but there is not one found in an Age who will rather not choose to die than make such a Confession or either by Word or Look recede from the entire Grandeur of an invincible Courage There is not a Man amongst them who had not rather be Kill'd and Eaten than so much as to open his mouth to entreat he may not They use them with all Liberality and Freedom to the end their Lives may be so much the dearer to them but frequently entertain them withal with Menaces of their approaching Death of the Torments they are to suffer of the preparations are making in order to it of the mangling their Limbs and of the Feast is to be made where their Carcasses is to be the only Dish All which they do to no other end but only to extort some gentle or submissive word from them or to Fright them so as to make them run away to obtain this advantage that they were terrified and that their Constancy was shaken and indeed if rightly taken it is in this point only that a true Victory does consist Claud. in Panegyr Victoria nulla est Quam quae confessos animo quoque subjugat hostes No Victory can be entire and true But what does Minds as well as Limbs subdue The Hungarians a very Warlike People never pretended further than to reduce the Enemy to their Discretion for having forc'd this Confession from them they let them go without Injury or Ransom excepting at the most to make them engage their word never to bear Arms against them again We have several advantages over our Enemies that are borrowed and not truly our own 't is the quality of a Porter and no effect of Vertue to have stronger Arms and Legs 't
too Stilpo having escap'd from the Fire that Consum'd the City where he Liv'd and where he had his Wife Children Goods and all that ever he was Master of destroy'd by the Flame Demetrius Poliorcetes seeing him in so great a Ruine of his Country appear with so Serene and Undisturb'd a Countenance ask'd him if he had receiv'd no Loss To which he made Answer No and that thanks be to God nothing was lost of his which also was the meaning of the Philosopher Antisthenes when he pleasantly said That Men should only furnish themselves with such things as would Swim and might with the Owner escape the Storm and certainly a Wise Man never loses any thing if he have himself When the City of Nola was Ruin'd by the Barbarians Paulinus who was Bishop of that place having there lost all he had and himself a Prisoner Pray'd after this manner O Lord defend me from being sensible of this Loss for thou knowest they have yet touch'd nothing of that which is mine The Riches that made him Rich and the Goods that made him Good were still kept entire This it is to make choice of Treasures that can secure themselves from Plunder and Violence and to hide them in such a place into which no one can enter and that are not to be betray'd by any but our selves Wives Children and Goods must be had and especially Health by him that can get it but we are not so to set our Hearts upon them that our Happiness must have its dependance upon any of these we must reserve a Back-shop a Withdrawing Room wholly our own and entirely free wherein to settle our true Liberty our principal Solitude and Retreat And in this we must for the most part entertain our selves with our selves and so privately that no Knowledge or Communication of any Exotick Concern be admitted there there to Laugh and to Talk as if without Wife Children Goods Train or Attendance to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these it may be no new thing to be without them We have a Mind pliable of it self that will be Company has wherewithal to attack and to defend to receive and to give Let us not then fear in this Solitude to Languish under an uncomfortable Vacancy In solis sis tibi turba locis In Solitary places be Unto thy self good Company Vertue is satisfied with her self without Discipline without Words without Effects In our ordinary actions there is not one of a thousand that concerns our selves He that thou seest Scambling up the Ruines of that Wall Furious and Transported against whom so many Harquebuze Shot are levell'd and that other all over Scars Pale and Fainting with Hunger and yet resolv'd rather to Die than to open his Gate to HIm dost thou think that these Men are there upon their own account No peradventure in the behalf of one whom they never saw and that never concerns himself for their Pains and Danger but lies Wallowing the while in Slouth and Pleasure This other Slavering Blear-eyed Slovenly Fellow that thou seest come out of his Study after Midnight dost thou think he has been Tumbling over Books to Learn how to become a better Man Wiser and more Content No such matter he will there end his Days but he will teach Posterity the measure of Plautus his Verses and the Orthography of a Latin Word Who is it that does not Voluntarily exchange his Health his Repose and his very Life for Reputation and Glory The most Useless Frivolous and false Coin that passes currant amongst us Our own Death does not sufficiently terrifie and trouble us let us moreover charge our selves with those of our Wives Children and Family Our own affairs do not afford us anxiety enough let us undertake those of our Neighbours and Friends still more to break our Brains and torment us Ter. Adel. Act. 1. Sc. 1. Vah quemquamne hominem in animum instituere aut Parare quod sit charius quâ—m ipse est sibi Alas what mortal will be so unwise Any thing dearer than himself to prize Solitude seems to me to have the best pretence in such as have already employed their most active and flourishing age in the World's service by the example of Thales We have lived enough for others let us at least Live out the small Remnant of Life for our Selves let us now call in our Thoughts and Intentions to our Selves and to our own Ease and Repose 'T is no light thing to make a sure Retreat it will be enough to do without mixing other Enterprises and Designs since God gives us leisure to prepare for and to order our Remove let us make Ready Truss our Baggage take leave betimes of the Company let us disentangle our selves from those violent importunities that engage us elsewhere and separate us from our Selves We must break the Knot of our Obligations how strong soever and hereafter Love this or that but espouse nothing but our Selves That is to say let the remainder be our own but not so joyn'd and so close as not to be forc'd away without slaying us or tearing part of the whole piece The greatest thing in the World is for a Man to know that he is his own 'T is time to wean our Selves from Society when we can no more add any thing to it and who is not in a Condition to Lend must forbid himself to Borrow Our Forces begin to fail us and are of no more use for Foreign Offices let us call them in and Lock them up at Home He that can within himself cast off and Disband the Offices of so many Friendships and that tumult of Conversation he has contracted in the busie World let him do it In this decay of nature which renders him Useless Burthensome and importunate to others let him have a care of being Useless Burthensome and Importunate to himself Let him Sooth and Caress himself and above all things be sure to Govern himself with Reverence to his Reason and Conscience to that Degree as to be asham'd to make a false step in their Presence Rarum est enim Pythag. ut satis se quisque vereatur For 't is rarely seen that Men have Respect and Reverence enough for themselves Socrates says that Boys are to cause themselves to be instructed Men to Exercise themselves in well doing and Old Men to retire from all Civil and Military employments living at their own Discretion without the Obligation to any certain Office There are some Complexions more proper for these Precepts of Retirement than others such as are of a Soft and Faint apprehension and of a tender Will and Affection as I am will sooner encline to this Advice than Active and Busie Souls which embrace all engage in all and are hot upon every thing who offer present and give themselves up to every occasion We are to serve ourselves with these accidental and extraneous things so far
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
This Book Employment is as painful as any other and as great an Enemy to Health which ought to be the first thing in every Man's prospect neither ought a Man to be allur'd with the pleasure of it which is the same that destroys the Wary Avaritious Voluptuous and Ambitious Men. The Wise give us Caution enough to beware the Treachery of our Desires and to distinguish true and entire Pleasures from such as are mix'd and complicated with greater Pain For the greatest part of Pleasures say they Wheedle and Caress only to strangle us like those Thieves the Egyptians call'd Philiste and if the Head-Ach should come before Drunkenness we should have a care of Drinking too much but Pleasure to deceive us Marches before and conceals her Train Books are pleasant but if by being over Studious we impair our Health and spoil our good Humour two of the best pieces we have let us give it over for I for my part am one of those who think that no Fruit deriv'd from them can recompence so great a Loss As Men who feel themselves weakned by a long Series of Indisposition give themselves up at last to the Mercy of Medicine and submit to certain Rules of Living which they are for the future never to Transgress so he who Retires weary of and disgusted with the common way of Living ought to model this new One he enters into by the Rules of Reason and to Institute and Establish it by Premeditation and after the best Method he can contrive He ought to have taken leave of all sorts of Labour what advantage soever he may propose to himself by it and generally to have shaken off all those Passions which disturb the Tranquility of Body and Soul and then choose the Way that best suits with his own Humour Propert. lib. Eleg. 25. Unusquisque sua noverit ire via Every one best doth know In his own Way to go In Menagery Study Hunting and all other Exercises Men are to proceed to the utmost limits of Pleasure but must take heed of engaging further where Solitude and Trouble begin to mix We are to reserve so much Employment only as is necessary to keep us in Breath and to defend us from the Inconveniences that the other Extream of a Dull and Stupid Laziness brings along with it There are some Steril Knotty Sciences and chiefly Hammer'd out for the Crowd let such be left to them who are Engag'd in the Publick Service I for my part care for no other Books but either such as are pleasant and easie to delight me or those that comfort and instruct me how to Regulate my Life and Death Hor. Ep. 44. lib. 1. Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est Silently Meditating in the Groves What best a Wise and Honest Man behoves Wiser Men propose to themselves a Repose wholly Spiritual as having great force and vigour of Mind but for me who have a very ordinary Soul I find it very necessary to support my self with Bodily Conveniences and Age having of late depriv'd me of those Pleasures that were most acceptable to me I instruct and whet my Appetite to those that remain and are more suitable to this other season We ought to hold with all our force both of Hands and Teeth the use of the Pleasures of Life that our Years one after another snatch away from us Persius Sat. 5. Carpamus dulcia nostrum est Quod vivis cinis manes fabula fies Let us enjoy Life's Sweets for shortly we Ashes Pale Ghost's and Fables all shall be Now as to the End that Pliny and Cicero propose to us of Glory 't is infinitely wide of my account for Ambition is of all other the most contrary Humour to Solitude and Glory and Repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly Inhabit in one and the same place and for so much as I understand those have only their Arms and Legs disingag'd from the Crowd their Mind and Intention remain engag'd behind more than ever Perseus Sat. 1. Tun ' vetule auriculis alienis colligis escas Dost thou Old Dotard at these Years Gather fine Tales for others Ears They are only Retir'd to take a better Leap and by a stronger Motion to give a brisker Charge into the Crowd Will you see how they shoot short Let us put into the Counterpoise the Advice of two Philosophers of two very different Sects Writing the one to Idomeneus the other to Lucilius their Friends to Retire into Solitude from Worldly Honours and the Administration of Publick Affairs You have say they hitherto Liv'd Swimming and Floating come now and Die in the Harbour You have given the first part of your Life to the Light give what remains to the Shade It is impossible to give over Business if you do not also quit the Fruit and therefore disengage your selves from all the Concerns of Name and Glory 'T is to be fear'd the Lustre of your former Actions will give you but too much Light and follow you into your most private and most obscure Retreat Quit with other Pleasures that which proceeds from the Approbation of another And as to your Knowledge and Parts never concern your selves they will not lose their effect if your selves be ever the better for them Remember him who being ask'd why he took so much Pains in an Art that could come to the Knowledge of but few Persons A few are enough for me reply'd he I have enough of one I have enough of never a one He said true you and a Companion are Theatre enough to one another or you to your self Let us be to you the whole People and the whole People to you but one 'T is an unworthy Ambition to think to derive Glory from a Man's Sloath and Privacy You are to do like the Beasts of Chace who put out the Track at the entrance into their Den. You are no more to concern your self how the World talks of you but how you are to talk to your self Retire your self into your self but first prepare your self there to receive your self It were a folly to trust your self in your own Hands if you cannot Govern your self a Man may as well miscarry alone as in Company till you have rendred your self as such as before whom you dare not Trip and till you have a Bashfulness and Respect for your self Observantur species honestae animo Cicero Tusc Quaest 1 2. Let just and honest things be still Represented to the Mind Present continually to you Imagination Cato Phocion and Aristides in whose presence the Fools themselves will hide their Faults and make them Controulers of all your Intentions Should they deviate from Vertue your Respect to them will again set you right they will keep you in the way of being Contented with your self to Borrow nothing of any other but your self to restrain and fix your Soul in certain and limited Thoughts wherein
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
our late War of Milan where there hapned so many takings and re-takings of Towns the people impatient of so many various changes of Fortune took such a resolution to die that I have heard my Father say he there saw a List taken of five and twenty masters of Families that made themselves away in one weeks time An accident somewhat resembling that of the Zanthians who being besieg'd by Brutus precipitated themselves Men Women and Children into such a furious appetite of dying that nothing can be done to evade death they did not put in practice to avoid life insomuch that Brutus had much ado to save but a very small number Every opinion is of force enough to make it self to be espoused at the expence of life The first Article of that valiant Oath that Greece took and observâ—d in the Median War was that every one should sooner exchange life for death than their own Laws for those of Persia What a World of people do we see in the Wars betwixt the Turks and the Greeks rather embrace a cruel death than to uncircumcise themselves to admit of Baptism An example of which no sort of Religion is incapable The Kings of Castile having Banishâ—d the Iews out of their Dominions Iohn King of Portugal in consideration of eight Crowns a Head sold them a retirement into his for a certain limited time upon condition that the time prefixt coming to expire they should be gone and he to furnish them with Shipping to transport them into Africk The limited day came which once laps'd they were given to understand that such as were afterwards found in the Kingdom should reâ—aâ—n Slaves Vessels were very slenderly provided and those who embark'd in them were rudely and villainously used by the Seamen who besides other indignities kept them cruising upon the Sea one while forwards and another backwards till they had spent all their provisions and were constrain'd to buy of them at so dear rates and so long withal that they set them not on Shoar till they were all stript to their very Shirts The news of this inhumane usage being brought to those who remained behind the greater part of them resolved upon Slavery and some made a shew of changing Religion Emanuel the successor of Iohn being come to the Crown first set them at liberty and afterwards altering his mind order'd them to depart his Country assigning three Ports for their Passage Hoping says the Bishop Osorius no contemtible Latin Historian of these later times that the favour of the liberty he had given them having fâ—il'd of converting them to Christianity yet the difficulty of committing themselves to the mercy of the Mariners and of abandoning a Country they were now habituated to and were grown very rich in to go and expose themselves in strange and unknown Regions would certainly do it But finding himself deceiv'd in his expectation and that they were all resolv'd upon the Voyage he cut off two of the three Ports he had promised them to the end that the length and incommodity of the passage might reduce some or that he might have opportunity by crouding them all into one place the more conveniently to execute what he had designed which was to force all the Children under fourteen years of Age from the Arms of their Fathers and Mothers to transport them from their sight and conversation into a place where they might be instructed and brougâ—â— up in our Religion He says that this produc'd a most horrid Spectacle The natural affection betwixt the Parents and their Children and moreover their Zeal to their ancienâ— Belief contending against this violent Deâ—ree Fathers and Mothers were commonly seen making themselves away and by a yet much more Rigorous Example precipitating out of Love and Compassion their young Children into Wells and Pits to avoid the Severity of this Law As to the remainder of then the time that had been prefixâ—d being expird for want of means to transport them they again return'd into Slavery Some also turn'd Christians upon whose Faith as also that of their Posterity even to this Day which is a Hundred Years since few Portuguese can yet reâ—ie or believe them to be real Converts though Custom and length of time are much more powerful Counsellors in such Changes than all other Constraints whatever In the Town of Castlenau-Darry Fifty Hereticks Albeg â—is at one time suffer'd themselves to be Burnt alive in one Fire rather than they would renounce their Opinions Quoties nâ—â— modo ductores nostri dicit Cicero sed universi â—tiam exercitus ad non dubiam mortem concurrerut How oft have not only our Leaders but whole Armies run to a certain and apparent Death I have seen an intimate Friend of mine run headlong upon Death with a real affection and that was rooted in his heart by divers plausible Arguments which he would never permit me to dispossess him off upon the first Honourable occasion that offer'd it self to him to precipitate himself into it without any manner of visible reason with an obstinate and ardent desire of Dying We have several Examples of our own times of those even so much as to little Children who for fear of a Whipping or some such little thing have dispatch'd themselves And what shall we not fear says one of the Ancients to that purpose if we dread that which Cowardise it self has chosen for its refuge Should I here produce a tedious Catalogue of those of all Sexes and Conditions and of all sorts even in the most happy Ages who have either with great Constancy look'd Death in the Face or voluntarily sought it and sought it not only to avoid the Evils of this Life but some purely to avoid the Satiety of Living and others for the hope of a better Condition elsewhere I should never have done Nay the number is so infinite that in truth I should have a better Bargain on 't to reckon up those who have fear'd it This one therefore shall serve for all Pyrrho the Philosopher being one Day in a Boat in a very great Tempest shew'd to those he saw the most affrighted about him and encourag'd them by the Example of a Hog that was there nothing at all concern'd at the Storm Shall we then dare to say that this advantage of Reason of which we so much Boast and upon the account of which we think our selves Masters and Emperours over the rest of the Creatures was given us for a Torment To what end serves the Knowledge of things if it renders us more Unmanly If we lose the Tranquility and Repose we should enjoy without it And if it put us into a worse Condition than Pyrrho's Hog Shall we employ the Understanding that was conferr'd upon us for our greatest Good to our own Ruine Setting our selves against the design of Nature and the universal Order of things which intend that every one should make use of the Faculties Members and Means he has to his own best
had sent to the Port having awak'd him to let him know that the Tempestuous weather had hindred the Senators from putting to Sea he dispatch'd a way another messenger and composing himself again in the Bed settled again to sleep and did so till by the return of the last messenger he had certain intelligence they were gone We may here further compare him with Alexander too in that great and dangerous Storm that threatned him by the Sedition of the Tribune Metellus who attempting to publish a Decree for the calling in of Pompey with his Army into the City at the time of Catiline's Conspiracy was only and that stoutly oppos'd by Cato so that very sharp language and bitter menaces past betwixt them in the Senate about that affair but it was the next day in the Fore-Noon that the controversie was to be decided where Metellus besides the favour of the People and of Caesar at that time of Pompey's Faction was to appear accompanied with a Rabble of Slaves and Fencers and Cato only fortified with his own Courage and Constancy so that his Relations Domesticks and several vertuous People of his Friends were in great apprehensions for him And to that Degree that some there were who past over the whole Night without Sleep Eating or Drinking for the manifest danger they saw him running into of which his Wife and Sisters did nothing but Weep and torment themselves in his House whereas he on the contrary Comforted every one and after having Supp'd after his usual manner went to Bed and slept profoundly till Morning that one of his fellow Tribunes rouz'd him to go to the encounter The knowledge we have of the greatness of this Mans Courage by the rest of his Life may warrant us securely to judge that his indifference proceeded from a Soul so much elevated above such accidents that he disdain'd to let it take any more hold of his Fancy than any other ordinary adventure In the Naval Engagement that Augustus won of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily just as they were to begin the Fight he was so fast asleep that his Friends were compell'd to wake him to give the Signal of Battel And this was it that gave Mark Anthony afterwards occasion to reproach him that he had not the Courage so much as with open Eyes to behold the order of his own Squadrons and not to have dar'd to present himself before the Souldiers till first Agrippa had brought him news of the Victory obtain'd But as to the business of young Marius who did much worse for the day of the last Battel against Sylla after he had order'd his Army given the word and Signal of Battel he laid him down under the Shade of a Tree to repose himself and fell so fast asleep that the Rout and Fight of his Men could hardly awake him having seen nothing of the Fight he is said to have been at that time so extreamly spent and worn out with Labour and want of Sleep that Nature could hold out no longer Now upon what has been said the Physicians may determine whether sleep be so necessary that our lives depend upon it for we read that King Perseus of Macedon being Prisoner at Rome was wak'd to Death but Pliny instances such as have lived long without sleep Herodotus speaks of Nations where the Men sleep and wake by half years And they who write the Life of the Wise Epimenides affirm that he slept seven and fifty years together CHAP. XLV Of the Battel of Dreux OUR Battel of Dreux is remarkable for several extraordinary accidents But such as have no great kindness for the Duke of Guise nor do much favour his reputation are willing to have him thought to blame and that his making a Halt and delaying time with his Forces he Commanded whilst the Constable who was General of the Army was Rack'd through and through with the Enemies Artillery his Battalion Routed and himself taken Prisoner is not to be excus'd And that he had much better have ran the hazard of charging the Enemy in the Flank than staying for the advantage of falling in upon the Rear to suffer so great and so important a loss But besides what the event demonstrated who will consider it without passion or prejudice will easily be induced to confess that the aim and design not of a Captain only but of every Private Souldier ought to look at the Victory in general and that no particular occurrences how nearly soever they may concern his own interest should divert him from that pursuit Philopoemen in an encounter with Machanidas having sent before a good strong party of his Archers to begin the Skirmish which were by the Enemy Routed and pursu'd who pursuing them and pushing on the Fortune of their Arms in the heat of Victory and in that pursuit passing by the Battalion where Philopoemen was though his Souldiers were impatient to fall on yet he was better temper'd and did not think fit to stir from his post nor to present himself to the Enemy to relieve his Men but having suffer'd them to be chas'd about the Field and Cut in pieces before his Face then charged in upon their Battallion of Foot when he saw them left Naked by their Horse and notwithstanding that they were Lacedaemonians yet taking them in the nick when thinking themselves secure of the victory they began to disorder their Ranks he did his business with great facility and then put himself in pursuit of Machanidas Which case is very like that of Monsieur de Guise In that Bloody Battel betwixt Agesilaus and the Boeotians which Xenophon who was present at it reports to be the rudest and most Blood that he had ever seen Agesilaus wav'd the advantage that Fortune presented him to let the Baeotians Battalion pass by and then to Charge them in the Rear how certain soever he made himself of the Victory judging it would rather be an effect of Conduct than Valour to proceed that way And therefore to shew his prowess rather chose with a wonderful ardour of Courage to charge them in the Front but he was well beaten and wounded for his pains and constrain'd at last to disengage himself and to take the course he had at first neglected opening his Battalion to give way to this torrent of the Boeotians fury and being past by taking notice that they march'd in disorder like men that thought themselves out of danger he then pursu'd and charg'd them in their Flanks and Rear yet could not so prevail as to bring it to so general a Rout but that they leisurely retreated still Facing about upon him till they were retired into safety CHAP. XLVI Of Names WHat variety of Herbs soever are shuffled together in the Dish yet the whole Mass is swallow'd up in one name of a Sallet In like manner under the consideration of Names I will make a hodge-podge of differ'ng Articles Every Nation has certain Names that I know not why are taken
greater and more constant Cause Rules and Subjects us to more powerful Laws But if things hit right it should seem that our Counsels and Deliberations depend as much upon Fortune as any things else we do and that she engages our very Reason and Arguments in her uncertainty and confusion We Argue rashly and adventurously says Timaeus in Plato by reason that as well as our selves our Discourses have great participation with the Temerity of Chance CHAP. XLVIII Of Horses dress'd to the Menage call'd Destriers I Am now become a Grammarian I who never Learn'd any Language but by Rote and who do not yet know Adjective Conjunction or Ablative I think I have Read that the Romans had a sort of Horses by them call'd Funales or Dextrarios which were either Led-Horses or Horses laid in at several Stages to be taken fresh upon occasion and thence it is that we call our Horses of Service Destriers And our Romances commonly use the Phrase of destrer for accompagner to accompany They also call'd such as were dress'd in such sort that running full speed side by side without Bridle or Saddle the Roman Gentlemen Arm'd at all pieces would shift and throw themselves from the one to the other desutorios equos The Numidian Men at Arms had always a Led-Horse in one Hand besides that they Rode upon to change in the heat of Battel â—iv l. 23. Quibus desultorum in modum binos trahentibus equos inter accerrimam saepe pugnam in recentem equum ex fesso armatis transultare mos erat Tanta velocitas ipsis tamque docile equorum genus Whose use it was leading along two Horses after the manner of the Desultorum Arm'd as they were in the heat of Fight to vault from a tir'd Horse to a fresh one so Active were the Men and the Horses so Docile There are many Horses train'd up to help their Riders so as to run upon any one that appears with a drawn Sword to fall both with Mouth and Heels upon any that front or oppose them But it oft falls out that they do more harm to their Friends than their Enemies considering that you cannot loose them from their hold to reduce them again into order when they are once engag'd and grappled by which means you remain at the Mercy of their senselss Quarrel It hapned very ill to Artibius General of the Persian Army Fighting Man to Man with Onesilus King of Salamis to be Mounted upon a Horse drest after this manner it being the occasion of his Death the Squire of Onesilus cleaving him down with a Scyth betwixt the Shoulders as the Horse was rear'd up upon his Master And what the Italians report that in the Battel of Fornoue King Charles his Horse with Kicks and Plunges disengag'd his Master from the Enemy that prest upon him without which he had been Slain sounds odly and he ran a very great hazard and came strangely off if it be true The Mamalukes made their Boast that they had the most ready Horses of any Cavalry in the World that by nature and custom they were taught to know and distinguish the Enemy they were to fall foul upon with Mouth and Heels according to a Word or Sign given As also to gather up with their Teeth Darts and Launces scatter'd upon the Field and present them to their Riders as they should have occasion to use them 'T is said both of Caesar and Pompey that amongst other excellent Qualities they were Masters of they were both excellent Horsemen and particularly of Caesar that in his Youth being Mounted on the bare Back without Saddle or Bridle he could make him run stop and turn and perform all his Airs with his hands behind him As nature design'd to make of his Person and of Alexander two Miracles of Military Art so one would say she had done her utmost to Arm them after an extraordinary manner For every one knows that Alexander's Horse Bucephalus had a head enclining to the shape of a Bull that he would suffer himself to be Mounted and Govern'd by none but his Master and that he was so Honour'd after his Death as to have a City erected to his Name Caesar had also another who had Fore-feet like the Hands of a Man his Hoof being divided in the form of Fingers who likewise was not to be Ridden by any but Caesar himself who after his Death dedicated his Statue to the Goddess Venus I do not willingly alight when I am once on Horse-back for it is the place where whether well or sick I find my self most a ease Plato recommends it for health as also Pliny says it is good for the Stomach and the Joints We read in Xenophon a Law forbidding any one who was Master of a Horse to Travel on Foot Trogus and Justinus say That the Parthians were wont to perform all Offices and Ceremonies not only in War but also all Affairs whether publick or private make Bargains conferr entertain take the Air and all on Horse-back and that the greatest distinction betwixt Free-men and Slaves amongst them was that the one rode on Horse-back and the other went on Foot An Institution of which King Cyrus was the founder There are several Examples in the Roman History and Suetonius more particularly observes it of Caesar of Captains who in pressing occasions Commanded their Cavalry to alight both by that means to take from them all hopes of Flight as also for the advantage they hop'd for in this sort of Fight Quo haud dubie superat Romanus Wherein the Romans did questionless excel So says Livy Liv. l. 3. however the first thing they did to prevent the Mutinies and Insurrections of Nations of late Conquest was to take from them their Arms and Horses And therefore it is that we so often meet in Caesar Caesars Com. Arma proferri jumenta produci obsides dari jubet He commanded the Arms to be produc'd the Horses brought out and Hostages to be given The Grand Signior to this Day suffers not a Christian or a Jew to keep a Horse of his own throughout his Empire Our Ancestors at the time they had War with the English in all their greatest Engagements and pitch'd Battels fought for the most part on Foot that they might have nothing but their own Force Courage and Constancy to trust to in a Quarrel of so great Concern as Life and Honour You stake whatever Chrysantes in Xenophon says to the contrary your Valour and your Fortune upon that of your Horse his Wound or Death brings your Person into the same danger his Fear or Fury shall make you reputed Rash or Cowardly if he have an ill Mouth or will not answer to the Spur your Honour must answer it And therefore I do not think it strange that those Battels I spoke of before were more firm and furious than those that are Fought on Horse-back Virg. Aeneid lib. 10. Cedebant pariter pariterque ruebant Victores
am I now of an Age to be Reproach'd that I go out of the World too soon And yet he was but Eight and Forty Years Old He thought that to be a mature and competent Age considering how few arrive unto it and such as soothing their Thoughts with I know not what course of Nature promise to themselves some Years beyond it could they be privileg'd from the infinite number of Accidents to which we are by natural subjection expos'd might have some Reason so to do What an Idle Conceit it is to expect to Die of a decay of Strength which is the last of effects of the extreamest Age and to propose to our selves no shorter lease of Life than that considering it is a kind of Death of all others the most rare and very hardly seen We call that only a Natural Death as if it were contrary to Nature â—o see a Man break his Neck with a Fall be Drown'd in Shipwrack at Sea or snatch'd away with a Pleurisie or the Plague and as if our ordinary condition of Life did not expose us to these Inconveniences Let us no more flatter our selves with these fine sounding Words We ought rather at a venture to call that Natural which is Common and Universal To Die of Old Age is a Death rare extraordinary and singular and therefore so much less Natural than the others 'T is the last and extreamest sort of Dying And the more remote the less to be hop'd for It is indeed the Boundary of Life beyond which we are not to pass Which the Law of Nature has pitch'd for a 〈◊〉 not to be exceeded But it is withal a Privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then 'T is a Lease she only Signs by particular favour and it may be to one only in the space of two or three Ages and then with a Pass to boot to carry him through all the Traverses and Difficulties she has strew'd in the way of this long Carreer And therefore my Opinion is that when once Forty Years Old we should consider it as an Age to which very few arrive For seeing that Men do not usually proceed so far it is a fign that we are pretty well advanc'd and since we have exceeded the ordinary Bounds which make the just measure of Life we ought not to expect to go much further having escap'd so many Precipices of Death whereinto we have seen so many other Men to fall we should acknowledge that so extraordinary a Fortune as that which has hitherto rescu'd us from those imminent Perils and 〈◊〉 us alive beyond the ordinary term of Living is not likely to continue long 'T is a fault in our very Laws to maintain this Errour That a Man is not capable of managing his own Estate till he be Five and Twenty Years Old whereas he will have much ado to manage his Life so long Augustus cut off Five Years from the Ancient Roman Standard and declar'd that Thirty Years Old was sufficient for a Judge Sâ—â—vius Tullius superseded the Knights of above Seven and Forty Years of Age from the Fatigues of War Augustus dismiss'd them at Forty Five Though methinks it seems a little unlikely that Men should be sent to the Fire-side till Five and Fifty or Sixty Years of Age. I should be of Opinion that both our Vacancy and Employment should be as far as possible extended for the Publick Good But I find the fault on the other side that they do not employ us Early enough This Emperour was arbiter of the whole World at Nineteen and yet would have a Man to be Thirty before he could be fit to bear Office in the Common-wealth For my part I believe our Souls are Adult at Twenty such as they are ever like to be and as capable then as ever A Soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its Force and Vertue will never after come to proof Natural Parts and Excellencies produce that they have of Vigorous and Fine within that Term or never Of all the great Humane Actions I ever Heard or Read of of what sort soever I have Observ'd both in former Ages and 〈◊〉 own more perform'd before the Age of Thirty than after And oft times in the very Lives of the same Men. May I not confidently instance in those of Hannibal and his great concurrent Scipio The better half of their Lives they Liv'd upon the Glory they had acquir'd in their Youth great Men after 't is true in comparison of others but by no means in comparison of themselves As to my own particular I do certainly believe that since that Age both my Understanding and my Constitution have rather decay'd than improv'd and retir'd rather than advanc'd T is possible that with those who make the best use of their Time Knowledge and Experience may grow up and encrease with their Years but the Vivacity Quickness and Steadiness and other pieces of us of much greater Importance and much more Essentially our own Languish and Decay Lucret. l. 3. Ubi jam validis quassatum est aevi viribus Corpus obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque mensque When once the Body 's shaken by Time's Rage The Blood and Vigour Ebbing into Age The Judgment then Halts upon either Hip The Mind does Doat Tongue into Nonsense Trip. Sometimes the Body first submits to Age sometimes the Soul and I have seen enow who have got a Weakness in their Brains before either in their Hams or Stomach And by how much the more it is a Disease of no great pain to the infected Party and of obscure Symptoms so much greater the danger is And for this reason it is that I complain of our Laws not that they keep us too long to our Work but that they set us to work too late For the Frailty of Life consider'd and to how many Natural and Accidental Rubs it is Obnoxious and Expos'd Birth though Noble ought not to share so large a Vacancy and so tedious a course of Education The End of the First Book Books Printed for and Sold by MATTHEW GILLYFLOWER at the Spread-Eagle in Westminster-Hall FOLIO's CAbbala or Mysteries of State and Government In Letters of Illustrious Persons in the Reigns of Henry the VIII Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles The Third Edition with large Additions The Compleat Gard'ner or Directions for the right Ordering of Fruit-gardens and Kitchin-gardens with the Culture of Oranges and Melons Made English by John Evelyn Esq The compleat Horseman discovering the surest Marks of the Beauty Goodness Faults and Imperfections of Horses with the Signs and Causes of their Diseases the true Method both of their Preservation and Cure with the regular Use of Bleeding and Purging Also the Art of Shooing Breeding and Backing of Colts with a Supplement of Riding By the Sieur de Solleysell Querry to the French King Made English from the 8th Edition by Sir John Hope
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
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