of any one. We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings; 'tis fortune that gives them a shorter or longer life, according to her favour; and 'tis permissible to doubt whether those we have be not the worst, not having seen the rest. Men do not write histories of things of so little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest of an empire or a kingdom; he must have won two-and-fifty set battles, and always the weaker in number, as Cæsar did: ten thousand brave fellows and many great captains lost their lives valiantly in his service, whose names lasted no longer than their wives and children lived:

:

"Quos fama obscura recondit." 1

Even those whom we see behave themselves well, three months or three years after they have departed hence, are no more mentioned than if they had never been. Whoever will justly consider, and with due proportion, of what kind of men and of what sort of actions the glory sustains itself in the records of history, will find that there are very few actions and very few persons of our times who can there pretend any right. How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honour and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence? And for three years of this fantastic and imaginary life we must go and throw away our true and essential life, and engage ourselves in a perpetual death! The sages propose to themselves a nobler and more just end in so important an enterprise

est."

"Recte facti, fecisse merces est: officii fructus, ipsum officium

It were, peradventure, excusable in a painter or other artisan, or in a rhetorician or a grammarian, to endeavour to raise himself a name by his works; but the actions of virtue are

1 "Whom an obscure reputation conceals.”—Eneid, v. 302.

2 "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it; the fruit of a good service is the service itself."-Seneca, Ep. 8.

too noble in themselves to seek any other reward than from their own value, and especially to seek it in the vanity of human judgments.

If this false opinion, nevertheless, be of such use to the public as to keep men in their duty; if the people are thereby stirred up to virtue; if princes are touched to see the world bless the memory of Trajan, and abominate that of Nero; if it moves them to see the name of that great beast, once so terrible and feared, so freely cursed and reviled by every schoolboy, let it by all means increase, and be as much as possible nursed up and cherished amongst us; and Plato, bending his whole endeavour to make his citizens virtuous, also advises them not to despise the good repute and esteem of the people; and says it falls out, by a certain Divine inspiration, that even the wicked themselves ofttimes, as well by word as opinion, can rightly distinguish the virtuous from the wicked. This person and his tutor are both marvellous and bold artificers everywhere to add divine operations and revelations where human force is wanting:

"Ut tragici poetæ confugiunt ad deum, cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt:"1

and peradventure, for this reason it was that Timon railing at him, called him the great forger of miracles.2 Seeing that men, by their insufficiency, cannot pay themselves well enough with current money, let the counterfeit be superadded. "Tis a way that has been practised by all the legislators and there is no government that has not some mixture either of ceremonial vanity or of false opinion, that serves for a curb to keep the people in their duty. "Tis for this that most of them have their originals and beginnings fabulous, and enriched with supernatural mysteries; 'tis this that has given credit to bastard religions, and caused

1 "As tragic poets fly to some god when they cannot explain the issue of their argument."-Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 20.

2 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, iii. 26.

them to be countenanced by men of understanding; and
for this, that Numa and Sertorius, to possess their men with
a better opinion of them, fed them with this foppery; one,
that the nymph Egeria, the other that his white hind,
brought them all their counsels from the gods. And the
authority that Numa gave to his laws, under the title of
the patronage of this goddess, Zoroaster, legislator of the
Bactrians and Persians, gave to his under the name of the
God Oromazis: Trismegistus, legislator of the Egyptians,
under that of Mercury; Xamolxis, legislator of the Scythians,
under that of Vesta; Charondas, legislator of the Chalcidians,
under that of Saturn; Minos, legislator of the Candiots, under
that of Jupiter; Lycurgus, legislator of the Lacedæmonians,
under that of Apollo; and Draco and Solon, legislators
of the Athenians, under that of Minerva.
And every
government has a god at the head of it; the others falsely,
that truly, which Moses set over the Jews at their departure
out of Egypt. The religion of the Bedouins, as the Sire
de Joinville reports, amongst other things, enjoined a belief
that the soul of him amongst them who died for his prince,
went into another body more happy, more beautiful, and
more robust than the former; by which means they much
more willingly ventured their lives:-

"In ferrum mens prona viris, animæque capaces
Mortis, et ignavum est redituræ parcere vitæ."1

This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every nation has many such examples of its own; but this subject would require a treatise by itself.

To add one word more to my former discourse, I would advise the ladies no longer to call that honour which is but their duty :

"Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;"2

1 "Men's minds are prone to the sword, and their souls able to bear death; and it is base to spare a life that will be renewed."-Lucan, i. 461. 2 "As custom puts it, that only is called honest which is glorious by the public voice."-Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 15.

their duty is the mark, their honour but the outward rind. Neither would I advise them to give this excuse for payment of their denial: for I presuppose that their intentions, their desire, and will, which are things wherein their honour is not at all concerned, forasmuch as nothing thereof appears without, are much better regulated than the effects:

"Quæ quia non liceat, non facit, illa facit:"1

The offence, both towards God and in the conscience, would be as great to desire as to do it; and, besides, they are actions so private and secret of themselves, as would be easily enough kept from the knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists, if they had not another respect to their duty, and the affection they bear to chastity, for itself. Every woman of honour will much rather choose to lose her honour than to hurt her conscience.

CHAPTER XVII

OF PRESUMPTION

THERE is another sort of glory, which is the having too good an opinion of our own worth. "Tis an inconsiderate affection with which we flatter ourselves, and that represents us to ourselves other than we truly are: like the passion of love, that lends beauties and graces to the object, and makes those who are caught by it, with a depraved and corrupt judgment, consider the thing which they love other and more perfect than it is.

I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side, that a man should not know himself aright, or think himself less than he is; the judgment ought in all things to maintain its rights; 'tis all the reason in the world he should discern in himself, as well as in others, what truth sets

1 "She who only refuses, because 'tis forbidden, consents."—Ovid, Amor., ii. 4, 4.

before him; if it be Cæsar, let him boldly think himself the greatest captain in the world. We are nothing but ceremony: ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold by the branches, and quit the trunk and the body; we have taught the ladies to blush when they hear that but named which they are not at all afraid to do: we dare not call our members by their right names, yet are not afraid to employ them in all sorts of debauchery: ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it: reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it. I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony; for it neither permits a man to speak well of himself, nor ill: we will leave her there for this time.

They whom fortune (call it good or ill) has made to pass their lives in some eminent degree, may by their public actions manifest what they are; but they whom she has only employed in the crowd, and of whom nobody will say a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if they take the boldness to speak of themselves to such as are interested to know them; by the example of Lucilius :

"Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim

Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis,
Votivà pateat veluti descripta tabellâ

Vita senis;" "1

he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and there portrayed himself such as he found himself to be:"Nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem, aut obtrectationi fuit."2

I remember, then, that from my infancy there was observed in me I know not what kind of carriage and

1 "He formerly confided his secret thoughts to his books, as to tried friends, and for good and evil, resorted not elsewhere: hence it came to pass, that the old man's life is there all seen as on a votive tablet."Horace, Sat. ii. 1, 30.

2 64

Nor was this considered a breach of good faith or a disparagement to Rutilius or Scaurus. "-Tacitus, Agricola, c. 1.