If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat,
With any wish, so mean as to be great,
Continue, heaven, still from me to remove
The humble blessings of that life I love.

I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for being so.

Dî bene fecerunt, inopis me quódque pusilli,

Finxerunt animi.2

I confess, I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little chearful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it) it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer uses to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her person; but, as Lucretius says,

Parvula, pumilio, Xapírwv uía, tota merum sal.3

Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur, Seneca' the elder describes to this effect: Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and

2 Horace, Sat. I. iv. 17. "The gods have done well in making me a humble and small-spirited fellow."

3 Lucretius, bk. iv. v. 1155. The poet, who has used very freely Greek appellatives in ten verses of the context, here describes the mistress he should choose, a wee pet darling of a pigmy size.

4 Suasorium Liber, Suas. 11.

sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants, but huge, massy fellows; no plate or houshold stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion: you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears: he kept a concubine, that was a very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till, at last, he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his cognomentum: when he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who alone opposed Xerxes's army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his arms, and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out, in a very loud voice: "I rejoice, I rejoice "-We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. "Xerxes (says he) is all mine own. He, who took away the sight of the sea, with the canvas veils of so many ships"—and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly way of

nonsense.

This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not in some things, and to some degrees, Grandios. Is any thing more common, than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in, without one to lead them; and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room, without a page or two to hold it

up? I may safely say, that all the ostentation of our grandees is, just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this, but a spice of Grandio? how tedious would this be, if we were always bound to it! I do believe there is no king, who would not rather be deposed, than endure, every day of his reign, all the ceremonies of his coronation.

The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from these majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparagement to them) as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements, and meanest recreations, of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of the most powerful and fortunate princes of the world,5 of late, could find out no delight so satisfactory, as the keeping of little singing birds, and hearing of them, and whistling to them. What did the emperors of the whole world? If ever any men had the free and full enjoyment of all human greatness (nay that would not suffice, for they would be gods too), they certainly possessed it: and yet one of them, who styled himself lord and god of the earth, could not tell how to pass his whole day pleasantly, without spending constantly two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime more agreeable, than to run about the streets all night in a disguise, and abuse the women, and affront

5 Louis XIII. The Duke of Luynes, constable of France, is said to have gained the favour of this powerful prince by training up singing birds for him.-Anon.

Beelzebub, signifies the Lord of flies.-COWLEY.

the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and
sometimes to be 'beaten by them: this was one of his
imperial nocturnal pleasures. His chiefest in the day
was, to sing, and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a
minstrel, upon the public stage: he was prouder of the
garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they
called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his fore-
fathers were, of their triumphs over nations: he did not
at his death complain that so mighty an emperor, and
the last of all the Cæsarian race of deities, should be
brought to so shameful and miserable an end; but only
cried out,
"Alas, what pity it is, that so excellent a
musician should perish in this manner!" His uncle
Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; that
was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the mad-
nesses of Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordid-
ness of those of Tiberius. Would one think that Au-
gustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of mankind,
a person endowed too with many excellent parts of
nature, should be so hard put to it sometimes for want
of recreations, as to be found playing at nuts and
bounding-stones, with little Syrian and Moorish boys,
whose company he took delight in, for their prating and
their wantonness?

Was it for this, that Rome's best blood he spilt,
With so much falsehood, so much guilt?
Was it for this, that his ambition strove
To equal Cæsar, first; and after, Jove?
Greatness is barren, sure, of solid joys;
Her merchandize (I fear) is all in toys:
She could not else, sure, so uncivil be,
To treat his universal majesty,

His new-created Deity,

With nuts and bounding-stones and boys.

But we must excuse her for this meagre entertain

ment; she has not really wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine. Her guests must be contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with the same cold meats served over and over again, even till they become nauseous. When you have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does there remain, which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year? Not so many servants or horses; but a few good ones, which will do all the business as well: not so many choice dishes at every meal; but at several meals all of them, which makes them both the more healthy, and the more pleasant: not so rich garments, nor so frequent changes; but as warm and as comely, and so frequent change too, as is every jot as good for the master, though not for the taylor or valet de chambre: not such a stately palace, nor gilt rooms, or the costliest sorts of tapestry; but a convenient brick house, with decent wainscot, and pretty forest-work hangings. Lastly, (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with that which I love most in both conditions) not whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens; but herb, and flower, and fruit gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear and wholesome as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph, or the urn of a river-god.

If, for all this, you like better the substance of that former estate of life, do but consider the inseparable accidents of both: servitude, disquiet, danger, and, most commonly, guilt, inherent in the one; in the other, liberty, tranquility, security, and innocence. And when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth which appeared to you, before, but a ridiculous paradox, that a low fortune is better guarded and attended than a high one. If, indeed, we look only

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