breath; festination may prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness. XXXIV. Since virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and without any noise from thyself will have their resound abroad, busy not thy best member in the encomium of thyself. Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all, whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall not however into the common prevaricating way of self-commendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others. He who discommendeth others, obliquely commendeth himself. He who whispers their infirmities proclaims his own exemption from them, and consequently says, I am not as this publican, or hic niger, whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vain-glory is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but containing some froth, no ink; as but consisting of a personal piece of folly, nor complicated with uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause abroad; every good man hath his plaudite within himself, and though his tongue be silent is not without loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him unto himself. .* XXXV. Bless not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens ;* but among thy multiplied acknowledgments lift up one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents, that modesty, humility, patience, and veracity, lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee. From such foundations thou may'st be happy in a virtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness; so may'st thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper. As charity covers, so modesty preventeth a multitude of sins; withholding from noonday vices and brazen-browed iniquities, from sinning on the house-top, and painting our follies with the rays of the sun. Where this virtue reigneth, though vice may show its head it cannot be in its glory: where shame of sin sets, look not for virtue to arise; for when modesty taketh wing Astræa goes soon after.† XXXVI. The heroical vein of mankind runs much in the soldiery, and courageous part of the * As Socrates did. Athens a place of learning and civility. † Astræa goddess of justice, and consequently of all virtue. world; and in that form we oftenest find men above men. History is full of the gallantry of that tribe; and when we read their notable acts, we easily find what a difference there is between a life in Plutarch and in Laërtius. Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship, and fidelity, may be found. A man may confide in persons constituted for noble ends, who dare do and suffer, and who have a hand to burn for their country and their friend. Small and creeping things are the product of petty souls. He is like to be mistaken, who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltron friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty, are the gems of noble minds; wherein, to derogate from none, the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer. THE SECOND PART. I. Punish not thyself with pleasure; glut not thy sense with palative delights; nor revenge the contempt of temperance by the penalty of satiety. Were there an age of delight or any pleasure durable, who would not honour Volupia? but the race of delight is short, and pleasures have mutable faces. The pleasures of one age are not pleasures in another, and their lives fall short of our own. Even in our sensual days the strength of delight is in its seldomness or rarity, and sting in its satiety; modiocrity is its life, and immoderacy its confusion. The luxurious emperours of old inconsiderately satiated themselves with the dainties of sea and land, till, wearied through all varieties, their refections became a study unto them, and they were fain to feed by invention. Novices in true Epicurism! which by mediocrity, paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain* in a piece Cytheridian cheese, and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions. Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start of nauseating luxury; unto whose clear and naked appetite every meal is a feast, and in one single dish the first course of Metellus;† who are cheaply hungry, and never lose their hunger, or advantage of a craving appetite, because obvious food contents it; while Nerot half famished could not feed upon a piece of bread, and lingering after his snowed water, hardly got down an ordinary cup of Calda.¶ By such circumspections of pleasure the contemned philosophers reserved unto themselves the secret of delight, which the helluos of those days lost in their exorbitances. In vain we study delight: it is at the command of every sober mind, and in every sense born with us; but nature, who teacheth us the rule of pleasure, instructeth also in the bounds thereof, and where its line expireth. And therefore temperate minds, not pressing their pleasures until the sting appeareth, enjoy their conten *Cerebrum Jovis, for a delicious bit. † Metellus his riotous pontificial supper, the great variety whereat is to be seen in Macrobius. Nero in his flight.-Sueton. |