SEVERAL DISCOURSES,

BY WAY OF ESSAYS,

VERSE AND PROSE.

scribe the character which Cicero 4 gives of this noble slave, because it is a general description of all ambitious men, and which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the rule of their life and actions:

as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this world may be divided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves though to the vulgar it may seem a stoical para-remember) had many artificial touches and dox, will appear to the wise so plain and obvious, that they will scarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation.

Let us first consider the ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness, and after the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than what Sallust says, Dominationis in alios servitium suum mercedem dant; they are content to pay so great a price, as their own servitude, to purchase the domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice, is their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they are in the race of glory, no not like Atalanta for golden apples. Neither indeed can a man stop himself if he would when he is in this

career:

"This man (says he, as most of you may well

strokes, that looked like the beauty of great virtues; his intimate conversation was with the worst of men, and yet he seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best; he was furnished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the arms of labour and industry: neither do I believe that there was ever any monster of nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable persons: who more a favourite to the most infamous ? who, sometimes, appeared a braver champion; who; at other times, a bolder enemy to his countrey? who more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient in his toils? who more rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in giving? Above all things, this was remarkable and admirable in him, the arts he had to acquire the

Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habe- good opinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to

nas3.

retainit with great complaisance, to communicate all things to them, to watch and serve all the ocPray, let us but consider a little, what means casions of their fortune, both with his money, and servile things men do for this imaginary food. his interest, and his industry; and, if need were, We cannot fetch a greater example of it, than not by sticking at any wickedness whatsoever that from the chief men of that nation which boasted might be useful to them, to bend and turn about most of liberty. To what pitiful baseness did his own nature and laveer with every wind: -to the noblest Romans submit themselves, for the live severely with the melancholy,merrily with the obtaining of a pretorship, or the consular digni- pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with ty! They put on the habit of suppliants, and ran the young, desperately with the bold, and deabout on foot, and in dirt, through all the tribes, bauchedly with the luxurious: with this variety to beg voices; they flattered the poorest arti- and multiplicity of his nature-as he had made sans; and carried a nomenclator with them, to a collection of friendships with all the most wickwhisper in their ear every man's name, lest they ed and restless of all nations; so, by the artificial should mistake it in their salutations; they simulation of some virtues, he made a shift to enshook the hand and kissed the cheek of every saare some honest and eminent persons into his popular tradesman; they stood all day at every familiarity. Neither could so vast a design as market in the public places, to show and ingrati- the destruction of this empire have been underate themselves to the rout; they employed all taken by him, if the immanity of so many vices their friends to solicit for them; they kept open had not been covered and disguised by the aptables in every street; they distributed wine, and pearances of some excellent qualities." bread, and money, even to the vilest of the peoplc. En Romanos rerum dominos 3! Behold the masters of the world begging from door to door! This particular humble way of greatness is now out of fashion; but yet every ambitious person is still in some sort a Roman candidate. He must feast and bribe, and attend and flatter, and adore many beasts, though not the beast with many heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he could not content himself with a less power than Sylla's, was yet so humble, for the attaining of it, as to make himself the most contemptible of all servants; to be a public bawd, to provide whores,and something worse for all the young gentlemen of Rome, whose hot lusts and courages, and heads, he thought he might make use of. And since I happen here to propose Catiline for my instance (though there be thousand of examples for the same thing) give me leave to tran

'Fragm. ed. Mattaire, p. 116. Virg. Georg. i. 514.

3 Virg. Æn. i. 282

I see, methinks, the character of an AntiPaul, "who became all things to all men," that he might destroy all; who only wanted the assistance of fortune, to have been as great as his friend Cæsar was a little after him. And the ways of Cæsar to compass the same ends (I mean till the civil war, which was but another manner of setting his country on fire) were not unlike these, though he used afterwards his unjust dominion with more moderation than I think the other would have done. Sallust therefore, who was well acquainted with them both, and with many such like gentlemen of his time, says, "that it is the nature of ambition, to make men lyars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths: to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest; and to make a good countenance without the help of a good will." And can there be freedom with this perpetual constraint? what is it but a kind of

rack, that forces men to say what they have notion." This was spoken as became the bravest mind to!

man who was ever born in the bravest common

But with us generally, no condition passes for servitude, that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors. This is but a deception of the sight through a false medium; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince; the groom, the gentleman, and the lord, are as much servants one as the other; the circumstantial difference of the one's getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter, than the difference between a plain, a rich, and gaudy livery. I do not say, that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both, who can live contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this dependance upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power:

I have wondered at the extravagant and bar-wealth. barous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises which I find of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the seven grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before his country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips, cut off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he might, under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius, be received into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It is great pity the Babylonians suspected not his falsehood, that they might have cut off his hands too, and whipt him back again. But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city, and was made governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his offending slave with so little mercy,as ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how many are there in all nations, who imitate him, in some degree, for a less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment or some honour (as they call it), yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised! But you may say, though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry. I grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such, as cannot consist with liberty, though it may with honesty.

Thou art careful, frugal, painful; we commend a servant so, but not a friend.

Well then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced to endure in this ascent; but we are epicures and lords when once we are gotten up into the high places. This is but a short apprenticeship, after which we are made free of a royal company, If we fall in love with any beauteous woman, we must be content that they should be our mistresses whilst we woo them as soon as we are wedded and enjoy, it is we shall be the masters.

I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness: we enter into the bonds of it,like those of matrimony: we are bewitched with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse, before we know its true nature and interior inconveniences. A great fortune (says Seneca) is a great servitude; but many are of that opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero: "We fear (says he to Atticus) death, and banishment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils; and, if he have but some persons, from whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will flatter and worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an honourable servitude, if any thing indeed ought to be called honourable in so base and contumelious a condi

This parenthesis does honour to the writer's sepse, as well as candour, HURD,

Amatorem trecentæ
Pirithoum cohibent catena 7,

Let us begin with him by break of day: for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred suitors; and the hall and antichambers (all the out-works) possessed by the enemy: as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards, for entrance. This is so essential a part of greatness, that whosoever is without it, looks like a fallen favourite, like a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he pleases all the morning. There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to have their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their coach. Now I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of any one particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or the great man's, who waits every day to speak with all company.

Aliena negotia centum
Per caput, & circa saliunt latus

a hundred businesses of other men (many unjust,
and most impertinent) fly continually about his
head and ears, and strike him in the face like
Dorres. Let us contemplate him a little at
another special scene of glory, and that is his
table. Here he seems to be the lord of all nature:
the earth affords him her best metals for his
dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his
food; the air and sea supply him with their
choicest birds and fishes; and a great many men,
who look like masters, attend upon him; and
yet, when all this is done, even all this is but
table d'hoste; it is crowded with people for whom
he cares not, with many parasites and some
spies, with the most burthensome sort of guests,
the endeavourers to be witty.

jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the et cætera of their passions, which are the secret, but constant, tyrants and torturers of their life, I omit here, because, though they be symptoms most frequent and violent in this disease, yet they are common too in some degree to the epidemical disease of life itself.

But every body pays him great respect; every body commends his meat, that is, his money; every body admires the exquisite dressing and ordering of it, that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook; every body loves his hospitality, that is, his vanity. But I desire to know why the honest inn-keeper, who provides a public table for his profit, should be but of a mean proBut the ambitious man, though he be so many fession; and he, who does it for his honour, a ways a slave (o toties servus!) yet he bears it munificent prince. You will say, because one bravely and heroically; he struts and looks big sells, and the other gives: nay, both sell, upon the stage; he thinks himself a real prince though for different things; the one for plain in his masking-habit, and deceives too all the money, the other for I know not what jewels, foolish part of his spectators: he is a slave in whose value is in custom and in fancy. If then saturnatibus. The covetous man is a downright his table be made "a snare" (as the Scripture servant, a draught-horse without bells or feaspeaks)" to his liberty," where can he hope for thers: ad metalla damnatus, a man condemned freedom? There is always, and every where, to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest some restraint upon him. He is guarded with condition of servitude; and, to increase his microwds, and shackled with formalities. The half sery, a worker there for he knows not whom : hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole "He heapeth up riches, and knows not who shall smile, the nod, the embrace, the positive part-enjoy them 3;" it is only sure, that he himself ing with a little bow, the comparative at the mid- neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an indidle of the room, the superlative at the door; and, gent, needy slave; he will hardly allow himself if the person be pan huper sebastus, there is a hy- clothes and board-wages: persuperlative ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans, as are to the sea, "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further."

Perditur hæc inter misero lux 2, Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.

Unciatim vix de demenso suo,
Suum defraudans genium, comparsit miser *;

He defrauds not only other men, but his own genius; he cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man's sight, as well as judgment.

It seems a more difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man too is but a servant: what can be more the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to follow nothing but his own pleasures? Why, I will tell you who is that true freeman, and that true gentleman, not he who blindly follows all his pleasures (the very name of follower is servile); but he who ra tionally guides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the conduct and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the truth of the matter,

How many impertinent letters and visits must he receive, and sometimes answer both too as impertinently! He never sets his foot beyond his threshold, unless, like a funeral, he have a train to follow him; as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir, till the bearers were all ready. "My life (says Horace, speaking to one of these magnificos) is a great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market, and cheapen what I please, without being wondered at; and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum, without being missed." It is an unpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation, and censure, of others; as there may be vanity in it, so methinks there should be vexation, too, of spi-I am at that time rather his man, than he my rit: and I wonder how princes can endure to have two or three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater and more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants; but even this too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will be a servant to them (as many men are) the trouble and care of yours in the government of them all, is much more than that of every one of them in their observance of you. I take the profession of a school-master to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a commonwealth; yet certainly all his fasces and tyrannical authority over so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs.

I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of greatness: I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger, hatred, 1 Job xxxviii. 11.

⚫ Ps. Ixix. 22.
2 Hor. 2 Sat. vi. 59.

horse. The voluptuous men (whom we have fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly; the other, whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were xaxà Inglay, evil wild beasts: these are yacégns ágyal, slow bellies, as our translation renders it, but the word agyi (which is a fantastical word, with two directly opposite significations) will bear as well the translation of quick or diligent bellies; and both interpretations may be applied to these men. Metrodorus said, "that he had learnt anläg yasçi xaeleobai, to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures." This, by the calumniators of Epicurus's philosophy, was objected as one of the most scandalous of all their sayings; which, according to my charitable understanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, which is, that he thanked his own belly for that moderation, in the

3 Ps. xxxxix. 6.

4 Phorm. Act I. Sc. i. ver. 43.