themselves eminent and conspicuous above the rest And some againe for no other end but for the good of their Country and to be able to do great matters in the behalfe of it The one is alwayes a vice and is termed ambition the other when it is not a vertue may be called pride The first aiming at a vicious end it cannot seeme strange if he proceeds towards it by such meanes he flatters bowes to the People and viliâ—ies himselfe to grow great not refusing to doe any thing be it never so base and servile so it may but availe him towards the obtaining of domination The last raiseth nor his fortune by any such meanes vertue will not give way to it nor Pride will not suffer him Caesar and Alcibiades were of the first Cato and Coriolanus may be numbred amongst the latter And if Plutarch looking upon Coriolanus his actions with a Greeke eye would not attriâ—ute unto him the name of magnanimous and valiant yet he might have termed him proud but not ambitious From such different ends proceeds a diverse manner of operating from the diverse operation are produced various effects in the people and in those to whom they are done Flattering bending and humbling ones selfe increases love in the People and at the same time diminishes the conceit of him that does so it detracts from his Majesty and therewithall make him not so much to be admired The people rejoyce at it because it is for their profit but though they desire those men should be so whom they make choice of to love yet they doe not desire them to be such whom they in end to revererce So that when they will make choise of one to command them they will chuse him rather whom they admire then him they love Doing of great actions without flattering or bowing to the people causes admiration in their brest it does not suffer a tender love to take roote in their hearts but instead thereof it oftentimes breeds an awfull love in them for as Majesty cannot put on tendernesse without abasing it selfe so cannot a man put on Majesty without altering himselfe But these loves are too different The one resides in the concupiscible the other in the intelligible part The one is towards his equall and if he be not so it makes him so and requires mildnesse The other seems to be towards one's superior and requires majesty The first hath the person for its aime the second his vertue The tender love loseth it selfe or diminisheth when the subject becomes Majesticall the awfull and respectfull love when he comes to be low The one easily turnes to contempt the other many times is changed into hatred How could the name of marriage please Messalina in Siluius without the Empire while shee could not enjoy him as a husband unlesse he became Emperour Peradventure shee knew that the Majesty of that degree would take away the Adulterers love and chanâ—e hers That contempt would creep into Siluius his love and reverence into hers That she should be obliged to respect where she onely loved and change the tendernesse of affections into obsequiousnesse of esteeme How could the Tribunes suspect Coriolanus for tyranny seeing he had quite lost the Peoples hearts by the harshnesse of the pranck he had plaid them if they had not feared he would have made himselfe Master of their understandings by the greatnesse of of operations Who spoke more freely to the Tribes and more sharply rebuked them then our Saviour Christ yet knowing that by vertue of the great miracles which he had wrought he had bred in them an awfull and respectfull love he goeth away because they should not proclaime him King Those who flatter the People either are not at all called to command if they bee they doe not continue in it He that attaines to it by a tender love let him prepare strong force to keepe himselfe in lest contempt and repentance beat him out againe Hee that is come to it through a respectfull love may by the same maintain himselfe in it The people being once brought under obedience by the commanding genius wil commit no outrage nor use any violence unlesse it be first used to them Alcibiades exceeding eloquent acceptable in the Peoples sight being accused dares not appeare to defend himselfe Coriolanus rough and as unskilfull in all good arts as hee was enemy to insinuations hatefull to the People appeares rather vaunting then defending himselfe resolved to make manifest the greatnesse of his mind and spirit rather then his innocency He distrusts the love of tendernesse that often uses to transforme it selfe into contempt and confides in that respectfull love that admits not of contempt He feares not hate which is also compatible with such a kind of love not that the being angry with a great vertue totally excludes the reverencing of it it floating lightly over any thing that is not pestilently produced by the grossenesse of ignorance or rancour of malice What would Coriolanus have had more How came it that he did not know himselfe in the highest point of the Epicicle when he shewed his fortune superior to Romes and the altering of hers at his disposall when he had seen his emulators at his feete and his enemies at his discretion when hee had at the same time obtained the sweet taste of revenge and the magnanimus honour of not having taken it But this not knowing how to retreate is a thing as common to great subjects as the desire it selfe of retyring In greatest motions they discourse of rest and amidst most turbulent businesse of a vacancy Therein doe they place their felicity and it is in their hands to attaine to it and yet they doe not Peradventure they would rettire with satisfaction and beleeve they shall and put it off till that time and still there is something wanting that they can never attaine to that satisfaction nor yet retiring and being deceivers of themselves live in continuall trouble and motion injoying no other rest or peace but a vaine hope and Chimericall imagination that they shall enjoy it Sometimes againe it is neither deceit nor ignorance but ought to be imputed to generosity of heart and constancy of mind If fortune though never so great cannot be given over with satisfaction yet feare must at last make it be abandoned and if to attaine unto it is required an enforced valour an undaunted mind a brest of steele who can forsake it cowardly that hath valiantly attained to it He will pretend to be master of it and will beleeve that it cannot change nor alter He will imagine himselfe superior to it and will not be daunted at it though it do change He will beleeve it firme and yet will bee glad to have it alter not refusing to avoid the disgust of a calm to launch him self into a tempestuous sea chusing rather to runne with hazard than not to stirre at all and will be willing to struggle with contâ—ary windes rather
to take notice of it If any shews it him he is vexed thinking that by slighting the occasion he derogates from the greatnesse of his power Of these two wayes of passing over troubles the Female is the most common peradventure because Pusillanimity is more easie then Fortitude True it is that it is a vice but in this case the obtaining of the reward namely compassion will not let it seeme so Men had also rather compassionate then admire with compassion one benefits a wretched man without any loss yea with game with admiration he payes an homage due to a great worth even to his own disgrace The one is the daughter of that which the catastrophe in the world useth to bestow the other of that which our weakness cannot attaine to the first one goeth voluntarily to the other he is dragged The understanding afflicts it self in the acts of compassion if there be any delight it is in the sence In that of admiration it rejoices and the inferiour part is afflicted in it And although they be both oftentimes waies to take away the tormenting passion of envy yet the leaving of it by growing great or by seeing ones self outgon is every different It is mans nature to behold with an ill countenance those afflictions which God sends him and to make them greater then they are And with a good looke those which he procures to himselfe and make them lesse to avoid shame and gaine compassion He knowes that when they proceed meerely from Gods providence they are tokens of affection when from our own imprudency of punishment and to shew his love greater and his wrath lesser in the one case he increases and in the other he lessens it and alwayes to the losse and dammage of truth Which truth we ought not to wonder that nature hath placed according to Heraclitus his opinion in a deep well or according to Democritus in an obscure cave She did it to employ us all our life time in searching for it and when we have found it wee seek after nothing more then how to corrupt it Man provokes God by complaining of evill fortune more then he ought and by not attributing to him in prosperity so much as he should He knowes not he had it before it is gone and sometimes it goes away because it was not known And when with repentance wee should call our selves ingratefull with temerity giving new offence we call fortune unstable and which is worse we make it so Finally man finds such unsavourinesse in the meane and so much acrimony in the extreame that ordinarily he drawes back most from the first when he hath not arrived unto it and advances forward most when he is come to it or gone beyond it because he will not stay at it or because he would still go further from it whence comes that the young man shortens his years the old man encreases them His domestick and familiar figure saith Quintilian is hyperbole because he is an enemy to truth But this cannot be for truth is the object of mans most noble power it is not each ones equality it is reserved only for the best that which he sees in this world is sufficient to move his desire but because it is not so much as will satisfie it he is perplexed He would have it to be so but cannot really make it so he doth it as much as he can with hyperbole so that he lyeth not in hatred but in behalfe of truth corrupting that which is not his object to make it become so Alcibiades hath many Athenian Nobles that make love to him and offer him great presents he contemnes them A Country fellow falls in love with him sells all he hath and presents the money to him Alcibiades accepts of his love and his gift and with that mony makes him presently gaine a Talent He hath reason to make more esteeme of the Country Fellows affection then of the Nobles It was greater and sincerer He that gives not all he hath to the beloved person loves him not above all things he loves that better which he hath reserved for himself The passions of simple men are plaine those of Nobles are mixed with ambition The love of the one is meere love that of the other hath pride coined with it The one seeks only to delight himself the others to subject also yea more then subject hautines prevailing in them above affection whilest sometimes through jealousie by the death of the beloved they have deprived themselves of delight because they would not endure a Companion They say that love enters not an abject and degenerous breast but links it self only to noble hearts It is true of that part of love which is pride the peculiar sin of great ones Love is a Tyrant not only because he tyrannizes over him whom he conquers but because he also imprints in in him the Character of tyrannizing They decline love to be a desire of enjoying the thing beloved But it is also a desire to captivate its body and soule and to take away free will from it He that said Lucifer sinned through pride said well He that said he sinned through excess though he did not unfold it well did not peradventure speak totally ill The Angell saw God not as he is for then he would have loved him of necessity and in an ordinary way and had not sinned He loved him voluntarily and disorderly and sinned For it being made manifest to him that God would be humanated as we may say and man Goddisied changing vertue into passion adding pride to love to the desire of enjoying the desire of tyrannizing willing to be only alone or suffer no equall he forsook the love of God Iealous armed himself with hatred against mankind to hinder it as his rivall from enjoying the clear sight of the beatificall object But how stands Socrates amidst this multitude of lovers He peradventure beleeved that where there was so much beauty there was also a great disposition to vertues I meane not speculative but morall Even as amongst Brutes that which is the fairest performes best its proper naturall operation the Lion hath most valour the Greyhound most swiftness so to the understanding of many the fairest man should best perform those operations which are proper to man who being a compound of soule and body his said operations belong rather to the practicall then to the speculative intellect The speculative goes to the knowledge of the first truth the practick to the well directing of the operations according to true wisdom the one shall see its object only at home the other can only attaine unto it in its way And how should Nature give us our end in this world which though we labour for never so hard we cannot attaine in it But in what manner can that saying agree with Alcibiades actions who being exceeding beautifull was notwithstanding ambitious dishonest and lascivious They may say that the Prognostick is not
of the violent namely of not being durable Wherefore those that are such to keep themselves long in command have had their recourse to art when the favour of nature hath failed them feigning to have had some commerce with the Gods So that in mine opinion we may say that the understandingest doth command by cunning the most rash by violence and he that is endowed with true Fortitude by nature And indeed nature whose chiefe aime is to preserve the Species inclines man to obey him who may best preserve him And because he that hath fortitude is such a one he shall before others be set in this naturall state free from all violence and men will obey him in whom they shall see this vertue shine more then in others Coriolanus did not so much desire to bee honoured himselfe as to be commended to his Mother he esteemed of honours because they caused joy in her But why should others joy increase ours whether it be that of our Parents and Kindreds or our friends Man is so set upon the satisfying of his passions and the passions are so joyned and linked together and also desirous to be satisfied that the perfectly pleasing of ones passion or the being content with having pleased it is not ordinarily attained unto when the rest are froward and distasted For satisfaction of the sense of tasting savoury meat would be sufficient But he that will have it perfumed seekes to content the smelling also If he desires colour handsomnesse and shape he seeks to have the eye also pleased therewith and that the hearing likewise may have its delight he will eate his meat where there is playing and singing Neither there doth the sensuality of man composed of soule and body rest though his body wallow in delights the passions of the soul must also have some food feeding his ambition with finenesse of Table-linnen richnesse of vessels number of attendants invention disposition and singularity In the sense of feeling man should be content with softnesse but hee will have beauty for the eyes he desires perfumes to please the smell Nobility and vertue to appay his ambition and to content his irascicall part could he not also satisfie himselfe with the death of his enemy No fully to please the passions of his minde though he oftentimes doe it with losse and danger he will vain-gloriously have it known that it was he that slue him and the greater his innocency was the more he rejoyces in his revenge These examples are so cleare that they put it out of all question that mans desire is not content with the satisfaction of the passions of the body if he doth likewise in some sort partly satisfie his ambition The same as I believe happens as truly though not so plainly in the satisfying of ambition Cold and unsavoury seeme the advancements to honours and dignities all increases of greatnesse let them be of never so great moment seem despicable if there be not some content likewise given to the two chiefe passions of the body Irascible and Concupiscible Thereunto hath regard the desire of having at that time both those we love and those we haâ—e alive that we may rejoyce at the griefe which wee see in the one and the pleasure which we espy in the other That is a kinde of revenge belonging to the Irascible and this a kind of benefit done to him who is beloved which may be reduced to the Concupiscible Hee will thinke himselfe unfortunate who arriving to any happinesse hath not these two spectators a friend and an enemy Hence proceâ—ds the originall cause of his excessive delight who comes to great preferment in his fathers life time because that in this case both the foresaid affections are satisfied the sonne being both beloved also emulated by the father And though the emulation bee not so apparant yet sometimes there is as much of it as there is of love lesse discovered but sometimes more sharp whereupon he did very well that made it the chiefe of his joyes that his Father and his mother had seen him ride in triumph And it is no marvell if he did desire the presence of the one more than of the other because in the other wants emulation And indeed the delight is more perfect which we receive from the love that belongs to both than from the emulation which belongs particularly to the Father it failing unlesse it be by reflection of any desire which may produce griefe But how can it bee that a mans joy encreasing by his friends rejoycing his sorrowes should decrease by his friends grieving at his sorrowes St. Thomas saith that the friends griefe is considered not as a reall thing but as a mark and signe of one not as a dolorous passion but as a signe of love whereby the comfort is received To this learned saying might also be added That a friend being beloved as ones selfe we desire that all his actions should be perfect wherefore it doth trouble us to see him rejoyce in our calamities and we are glad when with his sorrow hee sympathizes with us in them The former being a signe of his slighting us and the other of his constancy in affection Adde to this finally the delight a man takes when he findes he hath made a happy choice of a friend and grief which oppresses him if he proves false Sannieticus King of Aegypt being taken prisoner by Cambyses sees his daughter in a servile habit drawing of water his sonne guarded by armed men to his death he looks upon them both with dry eyes Afterwards he sees one of his friends half naked and almost starved begging food to keepe him alive hee abandons himself to griefe weeping and lamentation The solution of this knot is very difficult Cambyses desires to know the reason and causeth Sanneticus to be examined about it as if he that does a thing alwayes knew the reason why hee doth it He many times is ignorant of it and oftentimes whereas the action produces the effects he makes it to be produced by the effects either to conceale the true cause or to boast of a wisdome which he hath not but onely preposterous ascribing the worke of Fortune to his own prudency The captive King answeres That he having no griefe to equall to the two first calamities had sacrificed it to the third as worthy of it Others will say that the two first brought him to the highest pitch of suffering and the third forced him to run headlong into lamentation Neither of these solutions satisfie me One savours of Poetry and the other is not altogether Philosophicall The greater grief according to Hippocrates doctrine doth not suffer the lesser to be felt then it was either greater or of another nature greater onely would not have been sufficient to extract teares it would rather have hindered the eyes from weeping it was of another nature namely a mixture of joy and griefe the first with its heat being able to make
satisfaction and love passe to the understanding How can you conceive vertue to be otherwise but faire and good if â—ou consider it as vertue and in what other shape can you consider it if it doth not appeare naked unto you Hate Rage and Envy cannot touch it they are mothes which stick onely on the garments wormes that inhabit putrifaction onely strip her of applauses wealth and all other vaine habiliments if thou wilt have her be secure and enamourthee This vertue which being once known violently stirres up love takes impression in mens hearts sometimes in the Great ones sometimes in the Peoples by very different wayes Some would have it remaine within the spheare of mediocrity some would raise it up to the concave of the Moone It is not alwayes envy which desires it low nor love that continually desires to have it exalted Sometimes it happens because a Great one would come into a strict league of friendship with it and the People would by its means enjoy an honorable servitude He that is possessed of such a noble gemme may communicate it to some by a relation of friend to friend to others of Master to Servant The one to be perfect requires equality the other to bee pleasing a kind of distance The greater the Master is the more honorable is the servant and the more cordiall the friend is the greater equality is between them But the connexion which the People hath with a person of eminent vertue is like a servant to his Lord and he is desirous to exalt him But the great ones is as one friends to another and he doth not desire to have him advanced Aristotle though he makes equality too necessary in friendship sometimes attributing it to superabundancy sometimes to want as if he discovered the truth out of its due distance and with a hindred and obstructed meanes seemes to contradict himselfe and pretend it to proceed from a great equality He either was or would be deceived he needed to have bin neither if he had affirmed that both these causes united did produce a most strict league of friendship Superabundancy and want if one of them alone be divided into two subjects brings forth either slavery or its image The poor is the rich mans slave and the Scholar the Masters and if he be not he is like some such thing Of two superabundancies and two wants there is framed an almost indissoluble bond of friendship The People that find in themselves nothing but defect goe towards vertue and desire to have it made great because they will serve it The great one who with the defect of vertue hath superabundancy of honour and wealth would find him out who hath superabundance of what he wants with defect of his superabundance and desires to have him low because he would make him his friend And if this latter comes also to be exalted to honours and wealth the other loses his superabundancy and remaines with deefct onely He hath nothing whereon to found the harmonious equality which produces friendship and because he abhorres the character of being a servant he hates that vertue exalted which he venerated when it was humble If there be a great pleasure in the world it consists in doing a benefit and if there be any greater it is in requiting it Therefore that must needs be exceeding great which is produced by the harmonious interweaving of abundance and defect where the benefit is at the same time done and requited Plutarch calls Coriolanus proud and impatient I agree to it He attributes the cause of it to want of study I dissent from it Because learning doth not onely not hinder these passions but according to St. Pauls saying produces Pride and according to Solomons Impatience I attribute it to his being born in the Roman Common-wealth which more desirous to increase then to preserve itselfe as it was made more of valour esteeme in its Cittizens thereof Patience Wherefore at the last keeping one still alive it fell for want of the other True it is that as it is not against the law of Patience that one upon occasion when there is need should violently oppose one that operates ill no more is it of the essence of valour to repaire all dammages and revenge all offences But the Romans cared not for these qualifications That Valour was more usefull to them which operated then that which suffered And because for that part of valour which lookes after revenge wrath was very usefull and very hurtfull to that which belongs to suffering it is not to be wondred that some of them had the vice of impatience coupled with the vertue of fortitude Seneca would not admit this doctrine of wrath he would have it rooted out as if our nature were so perfect that it wanted no instigation to make it operate well nor no curbe to keep it from working evill He that will see how man ought to make use of wrath which we also call choler let him consider what use nature makes of that choler which is called Bilis I meddle not with that part which is called Nutritive which subtilizes the bloud that it may the easilier nourish the parts which feeds the heart and the musculous flesh which tempers the cold of the Pituitous humour with Melancholy I will speake only of the Excrementall Bilis There is one naturall and another without nature or extra naturam One reserved in the Gall bagge that is to clense and absterge the pituitous humors together with the ordures because like a medicament it instigates and provokes the expulsive vertue to send forth that which is not to be retained and which being retained would kill The other breeds Dysenteries Diareas Deliriums Frenzies perfect Tertians and an infinite of such diseases And even just so it is with wrath One kind of wrath is a passion which like that unbridled Bilis running on furiously brings one to a precipice The other regulated by the understanding and set apart for some occasion serves to instigate the vertue of valour and as Natures excrementall Bilis is necessary to expell the excrements which nature would not move to doe if it were not instigated so likewise this wrath is necessary for man to drive that away from him which the understanding hath concocted and judged fit to be driven out But nature doth not make use of the Bilis onely to expell excrements onely but also of the serous matter to distribute the bloud of melancholy to excite the appetite to retaine the food and sustaine the body Of the sharp and serous humour to mixe with the seed to provoke to generation and preserve the kind Although that serous humour bee that which causeth Hydropsie though the Atra Bilis produces Quartanes Cancers Hypocondries Rage and Madness though that from the sharp subtile humour the greatest part of the Cutancall diseases have their beginning So the minde likewise makes use of Wrath for Fortitude of Ambition for Magnanimity and yet the one
against another for the Government or being both under one government are onely at odds amongst themselves That side which sees it selfe oppressed presently calls in the stranger to raise it selfe over its corrivall and be revenged They are both good occasions for thee to undertake one with more security and the other with more profit because the latter cals thee in to make thee Lord and the former that thou mightest make him Lord. There is another kind of faction in Kingdomes Cities or Provinces which is an enemy to those who are in authority because it was obliged to those who formerly had the government and this uses to bee where the Government hath bin altered as it was for a long time seen in Naples betweene the Arragonian and Angiovin faction And in this case he that is called in may bee more confident then in any other especially if he have but any Chimericall conjunction or affinity with those that were once Lords there To take away the priviledges of a Country gives occasion to call in strangers not with an intent to make them Lords but onely to have their assistance in framing their Common-wealth as the Low-Countries did making use of Germanes French and English and driving away all those whom they thought might any way aspire to principality If you assist such to free them from their Lords you need not fear that they will forsake you but if you should pretend to rule over them your self you would find a hard taske of it unlesse their rebellion did proceed from hatred to which choler being joyned there growes such a rage in the People as causeth unadvised operations wherein they proceed so farre before reason steps in that they find themselves so deeply ingaged that they cannot give back but are forced to follow as they begun for feare of ruining and expose themselves to any condition though it be farre worser then their first so it be not that which they had freed themselves from With these one must be quick and make sure worke before they returne to their right understandings There be also two wayes to help strangers when they are called in the one is with forces and that gives way to repentance the other no way admitteth of any Of the first wee have spoken already the second is when the state hath some secret weaknesse by meanes whereof it may be conquered or when the preservation of it consists in some strong hold and in this case there will be traitors found interest may and will produce them as also a sodaine wrath or disdaine where an evill may be done in an instant is able to make him become a Traytor who never had an intent to bee one because that hurried on by a sodaine and violent passion rather then by any premeditated will he will past all remedy the attempt consisting in an action so swift and mortall that it may be performed at the very first dash and being once performed it brings sodaine ruine which admits of no repentance Alcibiades provoked against the Athenians teaches the Spartans how they should fortifie the City of Decelea with walls and put a garrison into it if the ruine of his Country had consisted wholly in this as it did in part it had bin ruined and yet that first rage and violence of wrath being abated when Tisaphernes would have destroyed it he would not permit it Coriolanus in his fury leads on the Volsci to the destruction of Rome his fury being allayed he desists These repentings happen under Common-wealths sooner then under Kings as well because the Country as we said before is judged as alien in a princely government as also by reason that in a Common-wealth a subject seldome receives disgust from a whole City Where there bee factions of Nobles and Plebeians the one is alway in his favour and by him affected which will not suffer him to run precipitously to revenge For this cause did peradventure Coriolanus more then in pity of his Mothers teares abaÌ„don the thoughts of â—uining his country A stranger can repose but little confidence in such manner of subjects if he doth not meane to give them the command nay I may so say not if he would doe it as may be seene in Alcibiades Themistocles and Coriolanus When I attentively consider the fashions and carriage of Coriolanus I find them to be not much unlike Catoes and worthy of greater glory in as much as this last quite overthrew the Common-wealth when peradventure he might in part have saved it the other bore it up when it lay in his hand to destroy it Inflexibility or peradventure cruelty Freedome of speech or malice Constancy in operating or peradventure obstinacy Contempt of wealth and glory or it may bee hypocrisie Greatnesse of mind in not bowing to the People or peradventure pride Love of liberty which might be hatred of the Tyrant or envy these were the vertues so much commended in Cato and I find them almost all in Coriolanus and valour in a more sublime degree joyned to them Cato had an intent to defend the Common-wealth from the power of one man alone Coriolanus from all mens It was just in both and peradventure the cause equall but not equally beseeming The one would have a decrepit man grow young againe The other would not have a young man grow decrepit In Catoes time the Common-wealth was totall perverted confounded and full of discord so farre from its ancient institution that it was impossible to bring it to it againe In Coriolanus dayes it was not farre digressed from its ancient customes and might easily have bin reduced to them againe In the formers time the wisest men were of opinion that the onely cure of the common-wealth was to reduce it into one mans hand In the latters that the best remedy was to keep it out of the hands of the people that it might not perish They both lost the Consulship because they would not flatter Caesar causes hands to be laid upon Cato to carry him to prison and for shame will not suffer him to be brought thither Sicinius the Tribune takes hold of Coriolanus with intent to cast him downe headlong from the Tarpeian rock and repenting surceases Coriolanus is banished Cato exiles himselfe Cato joynes with Pompey more for rage in hatred to Caesar than being perswaded thereunto by the love of his countrey or zeale of the Common-wealth which he well knew would bee the Conquerours prey and most to be lamented if it became his who was the more cautelous and concealed and peradventure the worser man What wonder is it then if Coriolanus likewise enraged against the people seeing the Senate vilified finding no Pompey to side with joynes with Tullus They exalt their own Citizens the one with Romanes the other with Volscians Cato is overcome Coriolanus conquers If the other had been victorious it had not much strengthened the Common-wealth neither did it lose it selfe because this overcame If the Nobility had