Saying is a different thing from doing; we are to consider the sermon

apart and the preacher apart. These men lent themselves to a pretty

business who in our times have attempted to shake the truth of our Church

by the vices of her ministers; she extracts her testimony elsewhere; ‘tis

a foolish way of arguing and that would throw all things into confusion.

A man whose morals are good may have false opinions, and a wicked man may

preach truth, even though he believe it not himself. ‘Tis doubtless a

fine harmony when doing and saying go together; and I will not deny but

that saying, when the actions follow, is not of greater authority and

efficacy, as Eudamidas said, hearing a philosopher talk of military

affairs: “These things are finely said, but he who speaks them is not to

be believed for his ears have never been used to the sound of the

trumpet.” And Cleomenes, hearing an orator declaiming upon valour, burst

out into laughter, at which the other being angry; “I should,” said he to

him, “do the same if it were a swallow that spoke of this subject; but if

it were an eagle I should willingly hear him.” I perceive, methinks, in

the writings of the ancients, that he who speaks what he thinks, strikes

much more home than he who only feigns. Hear Cicero speak of the love of

liberty: hear Brutus speak of it, the mere written words of this man

sound as if he would purchase it at the price of his life. Let Cicero,

the father of eloquence, treat of the contempt of death; let Seneca do

the same: the first languishingly drawls it out so you perceive he would

make you resolve upon a thing on which he is not resolved himself; he

inspires you not with courage, for he himself has none; the other

animates and inflames you. I never read an author, even of those who

treat of virtue and of actions, that I do not curiously inquire what kind

of a man he was himself; for the Ephori at Sparta, seeing a dissolute

fellow propose a wholesome advice to the people, commanded him to hold

his peace, and entreated a virtuous man to attribute to himself the

invention, and to propose it. Plutarch’s writings, if well understood,

sufficiently bespeak their author, and so that I think I know him even

into his soul; and yet I could wish that we had some fuller account of

his life. And I am thus far wandered from my subject, upon the account

of the obligation I have to Aulus Gellius, for having left us in writing

this story of his manners, that brings me back to my subject of anger.

A slave of his, a vicious, ill-conditioned fellow, but who had the

precepts of philosophy often ringing in his ears, having for some offence

of his been stript by Plutarch’s command, whilst he was being whipped,

muttered at first, that it was without cause and that he had done nothing

to deserve it; but at last falling in good earnest to exclaim against and

rail at his master, he reproached him that he was no philosopher, as he

had boasted himself to be: that he had often heard him say it was

indecent to be angry, nay, had written a book to that purpose; and that

the causing him to be so cruelly beaten, in the height of his rage,

totally gave the lie to all his writings; to which Plutarch calmly and

coldly answered, “How, ruffian,” said he, “by what dost thou judge that

I am now angry? Does either my face, my colour, or my voice give any

manifestation of my being moved? I do not think my eyes look fierce,

that my countenance appears troubled, or that my voice is dreadful: am I

red, do I foam, does any word escape my lips I ought to repent? Do I

start? Do I tremble with fury? For those, I tell thee, are the true

signs of anger.” And so, turning to the fellow that was whipping him,

“Ply on thy work,” said he, “whilst this gentleman and I dispute.” This

is his story.

Archytas Tarentinus, returning from a war wherein he had been

captain-general, found all things in his house in very great disorder,

and his lands quite out of tillage, through the ill husbandry of his

receiver, and having caused him to be called to him; “Go,” said he, “if I

were not in anger I would soundly drub your sides.” Plato likewise,

being highly offended with one of his slaves, gave Speusippus order to

chastise him, excusing himself from doing it because he was in anger.

And Carillus, a Lacedaemonian, to a Helot, who carried himself insolently

towards him: “By the gods,” said he, “if I was not angry, I would

immediately cause thee to be put to death.”

‘Tis a passion that is pleased with and flatters itself. How often,

being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good

defence and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth

and innocence itself? In proof of which, I remember a marvellous example

of antiquity.

Piso, otherwise a man of very eminent virtue, being moved against a

soldier of his, for that returning alone from forage he could give him no

account where he had left a companion of his, took it for granted that he

had killed him, and presently condemned him to death. He was no sooner

mounted upon the gibbet, but, behold, his wandering companion arrives, at

which all the army were exceedingly glad, and after many embraces of the

two comrades, the hangman carried both the one and the other into Piso’s

presence, all those present believing it would be a great pleasure even

to himself; but it proved quite contrary; for through shame and spite,

his fury, which was not yet cool, redoubled; and by a subtlety which his

passion suddenly suggested to him, he made three criminals for having

found one innocent, and caused them all to be despatched: the first

soldier, because sentence had passed upon him; the second, who had lost

his way, because he was the cause of his companion’s death; and the

hangman, for not having obeyed the order which had been given him.

Such as have had to do with testy and obstinate women, may have

experimented into what a rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness

to their fury, and that a man disdains to nourish their anger. The

orator Celius was wonderfully choleric by nature; and to one who supped

in his company, a man of a gentle and sweet conversation, and who, that

he might not move him, approved and consented to all he said; he,

impatient that his ill-humour should thus spend itself without aliment:

“For the love of the gods deny me something,” said he, “that we may be

two.” Women, in like manner, are only angry that others may be angry

again, in imitation of the laws of love. Phocion, to one who interrupted

his speaking by injurious and very opprobrious words, made no other

return than silence, and to give him full liberty and leisure to vent his

spleen; which he having accordingly done, and the storm blown over,

without any mention of this disturbance, he proceeded in his discourse

where he had left off before. No answer can nettle a man like such a

contempt.

Of the most choleric man in France (anger is always an imperfection, but

more excusable in, a soldier, for in that trade it cannot sometimes be

avoided) I often say, that he is the most patient man that I know, and

the most discreet in bridling his passions; which rise in him with so

great violence and fury,

“Magno veluti cum flamma sonore

Virgea suggeritur costis undantis ahem,

Exsultantque aatu latices, furit intus aquae vis.

Fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis,

Nec jam se capit unda; volat vapor ater ad auras;”

[“When with loud crackling noise, a fire of sticks is applied to the

boiling caldron’s side, by the heat in frisky bells the liquor

dances; within the water rages, and high the smoky fluid in foam

overflows. Nor can the wave now contain itself; the black steam

flies all abroad.”--AEneid, vii. 462.]

that he must of necessity cruelly constrain himself to moderate it. And

for my part, I know no passion which I could with so much violence to

myself attempt to cover and conceal; I would not set wisdom at so high a

price; and do not so much consider what a man does, as how much it costs

him to do no worse.

Another boasted himself to me of the regularity and gentleness of his

manners, which are to truth very singular; to whom I replied, that it was

indeed something, especially m persons of so eminent a quality as

himself, upon whom every one had their eyes, to present himself always

well-tempered to the world; but that the principal thing was to make

provision for within and for himself; and that it was not in my opinion

very well to order his business outwardly well, and to grate himself

within, which I was afraid he did, in putting on and maintaining this

mask and external appearance.

A man incorporates anger by concealing it, as Diogenes told Demosthenes,

who, for fear of being seen in a tavern, withdrew himself the more

retiredly into it: “The more you retire backward, the farther you enter

in.” I would rather advise that a man should give his servant a box of

the ear a little unseasonably, than rack his fancy to present this grave

and composed countenance; and had rather discover my passions than brood

over them at my own expense; they grow less inventing and manifesting

themselves; and ‘tis much better their point should wound others without,

than be turned towards ourselves within:

“Omnia vitia in aperto leviora sunt: et tunc perniciosissima,

quum simulata sanitate subsident.”

[“All vices are less dangerous when open to be seen, and then most

pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled good nature.”

--Seneca, Ep. 56]

I admonish all those who have authority to be angry in my family, in the

first place to manage their anger and not to lavish it upon every

occasion, for that both lessens the value and hinders the effect: rash

and incessant scolding runs into custom, and renders itself despised; and

what you lay out upon a servant for a theft is not felt, because it is

the same he has seen you a hundred times employ against him for having

ill washed a glass, or set a stool out of place. Secondly, that they be

not angry to no purpose, but make sure that their reprehension reach him

with whom they are offended; for, ordinarily, they rail and bawl before

he comes into their presence, and continue scolding an age after he is

gone:

“Et secum petulans amentia certat:”

[“And petulant madness contends with itself.”

--Claudian in Eutrop., i. 237.]

they attack his shadow, and drive the storm in a place where no one is

either chastised or concerned, but in the clamour of their voice.

I likewise in quarrels condemn those who huff and vapour without an

enemy: those rhodomontades should be reserved to discharge upon the

offending party:

“Mugitus veluti cum prima in praelia taurus

Terrificos ciet, atque irasci in cornua tentat,

Arboris obnixus trunco, ventospue lacessit

Ictibus, et sparsa ad pugnum proludit arena.”

[“As when a bull to usher in the fight, makes dreadful bellowings,

and whets his horns against the trunk of a tree; with blows he beats

the air, and rehearses the fight by scattering the sand.”

--AEneid, xii. 103.]

When I am angry, my anger is very sharp but withal very short, and as

private as I can; I lose myself indeed in promptness and violence, but

not in trouble; so that I throw out all sorts of injurious words at

random, and without choice, and never consider pertinently to dart my

language where I think it will deepest wound, for I commonly make use of

no other weapon than my tongue.

My servants have a better bargain of me in great occasions than in

little; the little ones surprise me; and the misfortune is, that when you

are once upon the precipice, ‘tis no matter who gave you the push, you

always go to the bottom; the fall urges, moves, and makes haste of

itself. In great occasions this satisfies me, that they are so just

every one expects a reasonable indignation, and then I glorify myself in

deceiving their expectation; against these, I fortify and prepare myself;

they disturb my head, and threaten to transport me very far, should I

follow them. I can easily contain myself from entering into one of these

passions, and am strong enough, when I expect them, to repel their

violence, be the cause never so great; but if a passion once prepossess

and seize me, it carries me away, be the cause never so small. I bargain

thus with those who may contend with me when you see me moved first, let

me alone, right or wrong; I’ll do the same for you. The storm is only

begot by a concurrence of angers, which easily spring from one another,

and are not born together. Let every one have his own way, and we shall

be always at peace. A profitable advice, but hard to execute. Sometimes

also it falls out that I put on a seeming anger, for the better governing

of my house, without any real emotion. As age renders my humours more

sharp, I study to oppose them, and will, if I can, order it so, that for

the future I may be so much the less peevish and hard to please, as I

have more excuse and inclination to be so, although I have heretofore

been reckoned amongst those who have the greatest patience.

A word more to conclude this argument. Aristotle says, that anger

sometimes serves for arms to virtue and valour. That is probable;

nevertheless, they who contradict him pleasantly answer, that ‘tis a

weapon of novel use, for we move all other arms, this moves us; our hand

guides it not, ‘tis it that guides our hand; it holds us, we hold not it.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A man may always study, but he must not always go to school

Accursed be thou, as he that arms himself for fear of death

All things have their seasons, even good ones

All those who have authority to be angry in my family

“An emperor,” said he, “must die standing”

Ancient Romans kept their youth always standing at school

And we suffer the ills of a long peace

Be not angry to no purpose

Best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice

By resenting the lie we acquit ourselves of the fault

“By the gods,” said he, “if I was not angry, I would execute you”

Children are amused with toys and men with words

Consent, and complacency in giving a man’s self up to melancholy

Defend most the defects with which we are most tainted

Emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate

Fortune sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word

Greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose

Have more wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go

Hearing a philosopher talk of military affairs

How much it costs him to do no worse

I need not seek a fool from afar; I can laugh at myself

Idleness, the mother of corruption

If a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away

In sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure

Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge

Laws cannot subsist without mixture of injustice

Least end of a hair will serve to draw them into my discourse

Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ‘tis in us

Look on death not only without astonishment but without care

Melancholy: Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

Most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry.

No beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man

Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning

Our fancy does what it will, both with itself and us

Owe ourselves chiefly and mostly to ourselves

Petulant madness contends with itself

Rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury

Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom

Revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties

See how flexible our reason is

Seeming anger, for the better governing of my house

Shake the truth of our Church by the vices of her ministers

Take my last leave of every place I depart from

The gods sell us all the goods they give us

The storm is only begot by a concurrence of angers

Though nobody should read me, have I wasted time

Tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward

Tis then no longer correction, but revenge

Upon the precipice, ‘tis no matter who gave you the push

“When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet learning?”

When you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong

Young are to make their preparations, the old to enjoy them

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 13.

XXXII. Defence of Seneca and Plutarch.

XXXIII. The story of Spurina.

XXXIV. Means to carry on a war according to Julius Caesar.

XXXV. Of three good women.

XXXVI. Of the most excellent men.

XXXVII. Of the resemblance of children to their fathers.

CHAPTER XXXII

DEFENCE OF SENECA AND PLUTARCH

The familiarity I have with these two authors, and the assistance they

have lent to my age and to my book, wholly compiled of what I have

borrowed from them, oblige me to stand up for their honour.

As to Seneca, amongst a million of little pamphlets that those of the

so-called reformed religion disperse abroad for the defence of their cause

(and which sometimes proceed from so good a hand, that ‘tis pity his pen

is not employed in a better subject), I have formerly seen one, that to

make up the parallel he would fain find out betwixt the government of our

late poor King Charles IX. and that of Nero, compares the late Cardinal

of Lorraine with Seneca; their fortunes, in having both of them been the

prime ministers in the government of their princes, and in their manners,

conditions, and deportments to have been very near alike. Wherein, in my

opinion, he does the said cardinal a very great honour; for though I am

one of those who have a very high esteem for his wit, eloquence, and zeal

to religion and the service of his king, and his good fortune to have

lived in an age wherein it was so novel, so rare, and also so necessary

for the public good to have an ecclesiastical person of such high birth

and dignity, and so sufficient and capable of his place; yet, to confess

the truth, I do not think his capacity by many degrees near to the other,

nor his virtue either so clean, entire, or steady as that of Seneca.

Now the book whereof I speak, to bring about its design, gives a very

injurious description of Seneca, having borrowed its approaches from Dion

the historian, whose testimony I do not at all believe for besides that

he is inconsistent, that after having called Seneca one while very wise,

and again a mortal enemy to Nero’s vices, makes him elsewhere avaricious,

an usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a false pretender to

philosophy, his virtue appears so vivid and vigorous in his writings, and

his vindication is so clear from any of these imputations, as of his

riches and extraordinarily expensive way of living, that I cannot believe

any testimony to the contrary. And besides, it is much more reasonable

to believe the Roman historians in such things than Greeks and

foreigners. Now Tacitus and the rest speak very honourably both of his

life and death; and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous

person in all things; and I will allege no other reproach against Dion’s

report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so weak a

judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Caesar’s

cause against Pompey [And so does this editor. D.W.], and that of Antony

against Cicero.

Let us now come to Plutarch: Jean Bodin is a good author of our times,

and a writer of much greater judgment than the rout of scribblers of his

age, and who deserves to be read and considered. I find him, though, a

little bold in this passage of his Method of history, where he accuses

Plutarch not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone: for

that is beyond my criticism), but that he “often writes things

incredible, and absolutely fabulous “: these are his own words. If he

had simply said, that he had delivered things otherwise than they really

are, it had been no great reproach; for what we have not seen, we are

forced to receive from other hands, and take upon trust, and I see that

he purposely sometimes variously relates the same story; as the judgment

of the three best captains that ever were, given by Hannibal; ‘tis one

way in the Life of Flammius, and another in that of Pyrrhus. But to

charge him with having taken incredible and impossible things for current

pay, is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want of

judgment. And this is his example; “as,” says he, “when he relates that

a Lacedaemonian boy suffered his bowels to be torn out by a fox-cub he

had stolen, and kept it still concealed under his coat till he fell down

dead, rather than he would discover his theft.” I find, in the first

place, this example ill chosen, forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the

power of the faculties of--the soul, whereas we have better authority to

limit and know the force of the bodily limbs; and therefore, if I had

been he, I should rather have chosen an example of this second sort; and

there are some of these less credible: and amongst others, that which he

refates of Pyrrhus, that “all wounded as he was, he struck one of his

enemies, who was armed from head to foot, so great a blow with his sword,

that he clave him down from his crown to his seat, so that the body was

divided into two parts.” In this example I find no great miracle, nor do

I admit the excuse with which he defends Plutarch, in having added these

words, “as ‘tis said,” to suspend our belief; for unless it be in things

received by authority, and the reverence to antiquity or religion, he

would never have himself admitted, or enjoined us to believe things

incredible in themselves; and that these words, “as ‘tis said,” are not

put in this place to that effect, is easy to be seen, because he

elsewhere relates to us, upon this subject, of the patience of the

Lacedaemonian children, examples happening in his time, more unlikely to

prevail upon our faith; as what Cicero has also testified before him, as

having, as he says, been upon the spot: that even to their times there

were children found who, in the trial of patience they were put to before

the altar of Diana, suffered themselves to be there whipped till the

blood ran down all over their bodies, not only without crying out, but

without so much as a groan, and some till they there voluntarily lost

their lives: and that which Plutarch also, amongst a hundred other

witnesses, relates, that at a sacrifice, a burning coal having fallen

into the sleeve of a Lacedaemonian boy, as he was censing, he suffered

his whole arm to be burned, till the smell of the broiling flesh was

perceived by those present. There was nothing, according to their

custom, wherein their reputation was more concerned, nor for which they

were to undergo more blame and disgrace, than in being taken in theft.

I am so fully satisfied of the greatness of those people, that this story

does not only not appear to me, as to Bodin, incredible; but I do not

find it so much as rare and strange. The Spartan history is full of a

thousand more cruel and rare examples; and is; indeed, all miracle in

this respect.

Marcellinus, concerning theft, reports that in his time there was no sort

of torments which could compel the Egyptians, when taken in this act,

though a people very much addicted to it, so much as to tell their name.

A Spanish peasant, being put to the rack as to the accomplices of the

murder of the Praetor Lucius Piso, cried out in the height of the

torment, “that his friends should not leave him, but look on in all

assurance, and that no pain had the power to force from him one word of

confession,” which was all they could get the first day. The next day,

as they were leading him a second time to another trial, strongly

disengaging himself from the hands of his guards, he furiously ran his

head against a wall, and beat out his brains.

Epicharis, having tired and glutted the cruelty of Nero’s satellites, and

undergone their fire, their beating, their racks, a whole day together,

without one syllable of confession of her conspiracy; being the next day

brought again to the rack, with her limbs almost torn to pieces, conveyed

the lace of her robe with a running noose over one of the arms of her

chair, and suddenly slipping her head into it, with the weight of her own

body hanged herself. Having the courage to die in that manner, is it not

to be presumed that she purposely lent her life to the trial of her

fortitude the day before, to mock the tyrant, and encourage others to the

like attempt?

And whoever will inquire of our troopers the experiences they have had in

our civil wars, will find effects of patience and obstinate resolution in

this miserable age of ours, and amongst this rabble even more effeminate

than the Egyptians, worthy to be compared with those we have just related

of the Spartan virtue.

I know there have been simple peasants amongst us who have endured the

soles of their feet to be broiled upon a gridiron, their finger-ends to

be crushed with the cock of a pistol, and their bloody eyes squeezed out

of their heads by force of a cord twisted about their brows, before they

would so much as consent to a ransom. I have seen one left stark naked

for dead in a ditch, his neck black and swollen, with a halter yet about

it with which they had dragged him all night at a horse’s tail, his body

wounded in a hundred places, with stabs of daggers that had been given

him, not to kill him, but to put him to pain and to affright him, who had

endured all this, and even to being speechless and insensible, resolved,

as he himself told me, rather to die a thousand deaths (as indeed, as to

matter of suffering, he had borne one) before he would promise anything;

and yet he was one of the richest husbandmen of all the country. How

many have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and

roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others, and by them not at all

understood? I have known a hundred and a hundred women (for Gascony has

a certain prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat

fire than forsake an opinion they had conceived in anger. They are all

the more exasperated by blows and constraint. And he that made the story

of the woman who, in defiance of all correction, threats, and

bastinadoes, ceased not to call her husband lousy knave, and who being

plunged over head and ears in water, yet lifted her hands above her head

and made a sign of cracking lice, feigned a tale of which, in truth, we

every day see a manifest image in the obstinacy of women. And obstinacy

is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.

We are not to judge what is possible and what is not, according to what

is credible and incredible to our apprehension, as I have said elsewhere

and it is a great fault, and yet one that most men are guilty of, which,

nevertheless, I do not mention with any reflection upon Bodin, to make a

difficulty of believing that in another which they could not or would not

do themselves. Every one thinks that the sovereign stamp of human nature

is imprinted in him, and that from it all others must take their rule;

and that all proceedings which are not like his are feigned and false.

Is anything of another’s actions or faculties proposed to him? the first

thing he calls to the consultation of his judgment is his own example;

and as matters go with him, so they must of necessity do with all the

world besides dangerous and intolerable folly! For my part, I consider

some men as infinitely beyond me, especially amongst the ancients, and

yet, though I clearly discern my inability to come near them by a

thousand paces, I do not forbear to keep them in sight, and to judge of

what so elevates them, of which I perceive some seeds in myself, as I

also do of the extreme meanness of some other minds, which I neither am

astonished at nor yet misbelieve. I very well perceive the turns those

great souls take to raise themselves to such a pitch, and admire their

grandeur; and those flights that I think the bravest I could be glad to

imitate; where, though I want wing, yet my judgment readily goes along

with them. The other example he introduces of “things incredible and

wholly fabulous,” delivered by Plutarch, is, that “Agesilaus was fined by

the Ephori for having wholly engrossed the hearts and affections of his

citizens to himself alone.” And herein I do not see what sign of falsity

is to be found: clearly Plutarch speaks of things that must needs be

better known to him than to us; and it was no new thing in Greece to see

men punished and exiled for this very thing, for being too acceptable to

the people; witness the Ostracism and Petalism.--[Ostracism at Athens

was banishment for ten years; petalism at Syracuse was banishment for

five years.]

There is yet in this place another accusation laid against Plutarch which

I cannot well digest, where Bodin says that he has sincerely paralleled

Romans with Romans, and Greeks amongst themselves, but not Romans with

Greeks; witness, says he, Demosthenes and Cicero, Cato and Aristides,

Sylla and Lysander, Marcellus and Pelopidas, Pompey and Agesilaus,

holding that he has favoured the Greeks in giving them so unequal

companions. This is really to attack what in Plutarch is most excellent

and most to be commended; for in his parallels (which is the most

admirable part of all his works, and with which, in my opinion, he is

himself the most pleased) the fidelity and sincerity of his judgments

equal their depth and weight; he is a philosopher who teaches us virtue.

Let us see whether we cannot defend him from this reproach of falsity and

prevarication. All that I can imagine could give occasion to this

censure is the great and shining lustre of the Roman names which we have

in our minds; it does not seem likely to us that Demosthenes could rival

the glory of a consul, proconsul, and proctor of that great Republic; but

if a man consider the truth of the thing, and the men in themselves,

which is Plutarch’s chiefest aim, and will rather balance their manners,

their natures, and parts, than their fortunes, I think, contrary to

Bodin, that Cicero and the elder Cato come far short of the men with whom

they are compared. I should sooner, for his purpose, have chosen the

example of the younger Cato compared with Phocion, for in this couple

there would have been a more likely disparity, to the Roman’s advantage.

As to Marcellus, Sylla, and Pompey, I very well discern that their

exploits of war are greater and more full of pomp and glory than those of

the Greeks, whom Plutarch compares with them; but the bravest and most

virtuous actions any more in war than elsewhere, are not always the most

renowned. I often see the names of captains obscured by the splendour of

other names of less desert; witness Labienus, Ventidius, Telesinus, and

several others. And to take it by that, were I to complain on the behalf

of the Greeks, could I not say, that Camillus was much less comparable to

Themistocles, the Gracchi to Agis and Cleomenes, and Numa to Lycurgus?

But ‘tis folly to judge, at one view, of things that have so many

aspects. When Plutarch compares them, he does not, for all that, make

them equal; who could more learnedly and sincerely have marked their

distinctions? Does he parallel the victories, feats of arms, the force

of the armies conducted by Pompey, and his triumphs, with those of

Agesilaus? “I do not believe,” says he, “that Xenophon himself, if he

were now living, though he were allowed to write whatever pleased him to

the advantage of Agesilaus, would dare to bring them into comparison.”

Does he speak of paralleling Lysander to Sylla. “There is,” says he,

“no comparison, either in the number of victories or in the hazard of

battles, for Lysander only gained two naval battles.” This is not to

derogate from the Romans; for having only simply named them with the

Greeks, he can have done them no injury, what disparity soever there may

be betwixt them and Plutarch does not entirely oppose them to one

another; there is no preference in general; he only compares the pieces

and circumstances one after another, and gives of every one a particular

and separate judgment. Wherefore, if any one could convict him of

partiality, he ought to pick out some one of those particular judgments,

or say, in general, that he was mistaken in comparing such a Greek to

such a Roman, when there were others more fit and better resembling to

parallel him to.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE STORY OF SPURINA

Philosophy thinks she has not ill employed her talent when she has given

the sovereignty of the soul and the authority of restraining our

appetites to reason. Amongst which, they who judge that there is none

more violent than those which spring from love, have this opinion also,

that they seize both body and soul, and possess the whole man, so that

even health itself depends upon them, and medicine is sometimes

constrained to pimp for them; but one might, on the contrary, also say,

that the mixture of the body brings an abatement and weakening; for such

desires are subject to satiety, and capable of material remedies.

Many, being determined to rid their soul from the continual alarms of

this appetite, have made use of incision and amputation of the rebelling

members; others have subdued their force and ardour by the frequent

application of cold things, as snow and vinegar. The sackcloths of our

ancestors were for this purpose, which is cloth woven of horse hair, of

which some of them made shirts, and others girdles, to torture and

correct their reins. A prince, not long ago, told me that in his youth

upon a solemn festival in the court of King Francis I., where everybody

was finely dressed, he would needs put on his father’s hair shirt, which

was still kept in the house; but how great soever his devotion was, he

had not patience to wear it till night, and was sick a long time after;

adding withal, that he did not think there could be any youthful heat so

fierce that the use of this recipe would not mortify, and yet perhaps he

never essayed the most violent; for experience shows us, that such

emotions are often seen under rude and slovenly clothes, and that a hair

shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.

Xenocrates proceeded with greater rigour in this affair; for his

disciples, to make trial of his continency, having slipt Lais, that

beautiful and famous courtesan, into his bed, quite naked, excepting the

arms of her beauty and her wanton allurements, her philters, finding

that, in despite of his reason and philosophical rules, his unruly flesh

began to mutiny, he caused those members of his to be burned that he

found consenting to this rebellion. Whereas the passions which wholly

reside in the soul, as ambition, avarice, and the rest, find the reason

much more to do, because it cannot there be helped but by its own means;

neither are those appetites capable of satiety, but grow sharper and

increase by fruition.

The sole example of Julius Caesar may suffice to demonstrate to us the

disparity of these appetites; for never was man more addicted to amorous

delights than he: of which one testimony is the peculiar care he had of

his person, to such a degree, as to make use of the most lascivious means

to that end then in use, as to have all the hairs of his body twitched

off, and to wipe all over with perfumes with the extremest nicety.

And he was a beautiful person in himself, of a fair complexion, tall,

and sprightly, full faced, with quick hazel eyes, if we may believe

Suetonius; for the statues of him that we see at Rome do not in all

points answer this description. Besides his wives, whom he four times

changed, without reckoning the amours of his boyhood with Nicomedes, king

of Bithynia, he had the maidenhead of the renowned Cleopatra, queen of

Egypt; witness the little Caesario whom he had by her. He also made love

to. Eunoe, queen of Mauritania, and at Rome, to Posthumia, the wife of

Servius Sulpitius; to Lollia, the wife of Gabinius to Tertulla, the wife

of Crassus, and even to Mutia, wife to the great Pompey: which was the

reason, the Roman historians say, that she was repudiated by her husband,

which Plutarch confesses to be more than he knew; and the Curios, both

father and son, afterwards reproached Pompey, when he married Caesar’s

daughter, that he had made himself son-in-law to a man who had made him

cuckold, and one whom he himself was wont to call AEgisthus. Besides all

these, he entertained Servilia, Cato’s sister and mother to Marcus

Brutus, whence, every one believes, proceeded the great affection he had

to Brutus, by reason that he was born at a time when it was likely he

might be his son. So that I have reason, methinks, to take him for a man

extremely given to this debauch, and of very amorous constitution. But

the other passion of ambition, with which he was infinitely smitten,

arising in him to contend with the former, it was boon compelled to give

way.

And here calling to mind Mohammed, who won Constantinople, and finally

exterminated the Grecian name, I do not know where these two were so

evenly balanced; equally an indefatigable lecher and soldier: but where

they both meet in his life and jostle one another, the quarrelling

passion always gets the better of the amorous one, and this though it was

out of its natural season never regained an absolute sovereignty over the

other till he had arrived at an extreme old age and unable to undergo the

fatigues of war.

What is related for a contrary example of Ladislaus, king of Naples, is

very remarkable; that being a great captain, valiant and ambitious, he

proposed to himself for the principal end of his ambition, the execution

of his pleasure and the enjoyment of some rare and excellent beauty. His

death sealed up all the rest: for having by a close and tedious siege

reduced the city of Florence to so great distress that the inhabitants

were compelled to capitulate about surrender, he was content to let them

alone, provided they would deliver up to him a beautiful maid he had

heard of in their city; they were forced to yield to it, and by a private

injury to avert the public ruin. She was the daughter of a famous

physician of his time, who, finding himself involved in so foul a

necessity, resolved upon a high attempt. As every one was lending a hand

to trick up his daughter and to adorn her with ornaments and jewels to

render her more agreeable to this new lover, he also gave her a

handkerchief most richly wrought, and of an exquisite perfume, an

implement they never go without in those parts, which she was to make use

of at their first approaches. This handkerchief, poisoned with his

greatest art, coming to be rubbed between the chafed flesh and open

pores, both of the one and the other, so suddenly infused the poison,

that immediately converting their warm into a cold sweat they presently

died in one another’s arms.

But I return to Caesar. His pleasures never made him steal one minute of

an hour, nor go one step aside from occasions that might any way conduce

to his advancement. This passion was so sovereign in him over all the

rest, and with so absolute authority possessed his soul, that it guided

him at pleasure. In truth, this troubles me, when, as to everything

else, I consider the greatness of this man, and the wonderful parts

wherewith he was endued; learned to that degree in all sorts of knowledge

that there is hardly any one science of which he has not written; so

great an orator that many have preferred his eloquence to that of Cicero,

and he, I conceive, did not think himself inferior to him in that

particular, for his two anti-Catos were written to counterbalance the

elocution that Cicero had expended in his Cato. As to the rest, was ever

soul so vigilant, so active, and so patient of labour as his? and,

doubtless, it was embellished with many rare seeds of virtue, lively,

natural, and not put on; he was singularly sober; so far from being

delicate in his diet, that Oppius relates, how that having one day at

table set before him medicated instead of common oil in some sauce, he

ate heartily of it, that he might not put his entertainer out of

countenance. Another time he caused his baker to be whipped for serving

him with a finer than ordinary sort of bread. Cato himself was wont to

say of him, that he was the first sober man who ever made it his business

to ruin his country. And as to the same Cato’s calling, him one day

drunkard, it fell out thus being both of them in the Senate, at a time

when Catiline’s conspiracy was in question of which was Caesar was

suspected, one came and brought him a letter sealed up. Cato believing

that it was something the conspirators gave him notice of, required him

to deliver into his hand, which Caesar was constrained to do to avoid

further suspicion. It was by chance a love-letter that Servilia, Cato’s

sister, had written to him, which Cato having read, he threw it back to

him saying, “There, drunkard.” This, I say, was rather a word of disdain

and anger than an express reproach of this vice, as we often rate those

who anger us with the first injurious words that come into our mouths,

though nothing due to those we are offended at; to which may be added

that the vice with which Cato upbraided him is wonderfully near akin to

that wherein he had surprised Caesar; for Bacchus and Venus, according to

the proverb, very willingly agree; but to me Venus is much more sprightly

accompanied by sobriety. The examples of his sweetness and clemency to

those by whom he had been offended are infinite; I mean, besides those he

gave during the time of the civil wars, which, as plainly enough appears

by his writings, he practised to cajole his enemies, and to make them

less afraid of his future dominion and victory. But I must also say,

that if these examples are not sufficient proofs of his natural

sweetness, they, at least, manifest a marvellous confidence and grandeur

of courage in this person. He has often been known to dismiss whole

armies, after having overcome them, to his enemies, without ransom, or

deigning so much as to bind them by oath, if not to favour him, at least

no more to bear arms against him; he has three or four times taken some

of Pompey’s captains prisoners, and as often set them at liberty. Pompey

declared all those to be enemies who did not follow him to the war; he

proclaimed all those to be his friends who sat still and did not actually

take arms against him. To such captains of his as ran away from him to

go over to the other side, he sent, moreover, their arms, horses, and

equipage: the cities he had taken by force he left at full liberty to

follow which side they pleased, imposing no other garrison upon them but

the memory of his gentleness and clemency. He gave strict and express

charge, the day of his great battle of Pharsalia, that, without the

utmost necessity, no one should lay a hand upon the citizens of Rome.

These, in my opinion, were very hazardous proceedings, and ‘tis no wonder

if those in our civil war, who, like him, fight against the ancient

estate of their country, do not follow his example; they are

extraordinary means, and that only appertain to Caesar’s fortune, and to

his admirable foresight in the conduct of affairs. When I consider the

incomparable grandeur of his soul, I excuse victory that it could not

disengage itself from him, even in so unjust and so wicked a cause.

To return to his clemency: we have many striking examples in the time of

his government, when, all things being reduced to his power, he had no

more written against him which he had as sharply answered: yet he did not

soon after forbear to use his interest to make him consul. Caius Calvus,

who had composed several injurious epigrams against him, having employed

many of his friends to mediate a reconciliation with him, Caesar

voluntarily persuaded himself to write first to him. And our good

Catullus, who had so rudely ruffled him under the name of Mamurra, coming

to offer his excuses to him, he made the same day sit at his table.

Having intelligence of some who spoke ill of him, he did no more, but

only by a public oration declare that he had notice of it. He still less

feared his enemies than he hated them; some conspiracies and cabals that

were made against his life being discovered to him, he satisfied himself

in publishing by proclamation that they were known to him, without

further prosecuting the conspirators.

As to the respect he had for his friends: Caius Oppius, being with him

upon a journey, and finding himself ill, he left him the only lodging he

had for himself, and lay all night upon a hard ground in the open air.

As to what concerns his justice, he put a beloved servant of his to death

for lying with a noble Roman’s wife, though there was no complaint made.

Never had man more moderation in his victory, nor more resolution in his

adverse fortune.

But all these good inclinations were stifled and spoiled by his furious

ambition, by which he suffered himself to be so transported and misled

that one may easily maintain that this passion was the rudder of all his

actions; of a liberal man, it made him a public thief to supply this

bounty and profusion, and made him utter this vile and unjust saying,

“That if the most wicked and profligate persons in the world had been

faithful in serving him towards his advancement, he would cherish and

prefer them to the utmost of his power, as much as the best of men.”

It intoxicated him with so excessive a vanity, as to dare to boast in the

presence of his fellow-citizens, that he had made the great commonwealth

of Rome a name without form and without body; and to say that his answers

for the future should stand for laws; and also to receive the body of the

Senate coming to him, sitting; to suffer himself to be adored, and to

have divine honours paid to him in his own presence. To conclude, this

sole vice, in my opinion, spoiled in him the most rich and beautiful

nature that ever was, and has rendered his name abominable to all good

men, in that he would erect his glory upon the ruins of his country and

the subversion of the greatest and most flourishing republic the world

shall ever see.

There might, on the contrary, many examples be produced of great men whom

pleasures have made to neglect the conduct of their affairs, as Mark

Antony and others; but where love and ambition should be in equal

balance, and come to jostle with equal forces, I make no doubt but the

last would win the prize.

To return to my subject: ‘tis much to bridle our appetites by the

argument of reason, or, by violence, to contain our members within their

duty; but to lash ourselves for our neighbour’s interest, and not only to

divest ourselves of the charming passion that tickles us, of the pleasure

we feel in being agreeable to others, and courted and beloved of every

one, but also to conceive a hatred against the graces that produce that

effect, and to condemn our beauty because it inflames others; of this, I

confess, I have met with few examples. But this is one. Spurina, a

young man of Tuscany:

“Qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit aurum,

Aut collo decus, aut cupiti: vel quale per artem

Inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho

Lucet ebur,”

[“As a gem shines enchased in yellow gold, or an ornament on the

neck or head, or as ivory has lustre, set by art in boxwood or

Orician ebony.”--AEneid, x. 134.]

being endowed with a singular beauty, and so excessive, that the chastest

eyes could not chastely behold its rays; not contenting himself with

leaving so much flame and fever as he everywhere kindled without relief,

entered into a furious spite against himself and those great endowments

nature had so liberally conferred upon him, as if a man were responsible

to himself for the faults of others, and purposely slashed and

disfigured, with many wounds and scars, the perfect symmetry and

proportion that nature had so curiously imprinted in his face. To give

my free opinion, I more admire than honour such actions: such excesses

are enemies to my rules. The design was conscientious and good, but

certainly a little defective in prudence. What if his deformity served

afterwards to make others guilty of the sin of hatred or contempt; or of

envy at the glory of so rare a recommendation; or of calumny,

interpreting this humour a mad ambition! Is there any form from which

vice cannot, if it will, extract occasion to exercise itself, one way or

another? It had been more just, and also more noble, to have made of

these gifts of God a subject of exemplary regularity and virtue.

They who retire themselves from the common offices, from that infinite

number of troublesome rules that fetter a man of exact honesty in civil

life, are in my opinion very discreet, what peculiar sharpness of

constraint soever they impose upon themselves in so doing. ‘Tis in some

sort a kind of dying to avoid the pain of living well. They may have

another reward; but the reward of difficulty I fancy they can never have;

nor, in uneasiness, that there can be anything more or better done than

the keeping oneself upright amid the waves of the world, truly and

exactly performing all parts of our duty. ‘Tis, peradventure, more easy

to keep clear of the sex than to maintain one’s self aright in all points

in the society of a wife; and a man may with less trouble adapt himself

to entire abstinence than to the due dispensation of abundance. Use,

carried on according to reason, has in it more of difficulty than

abstinence; moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering;

the well living of Scipio has a thousand fashions, that of Diogenes but

one; this as much excels the ordinary lives in innocence as the most

accomplished excel them in utility and force.

CHAPTER XXXIV

OBSERVATION ON THE MEANS TO CARRY ON A WAR ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR

‘Tis related of many great leaders that they have had certain books in

particular esteem, as Alexander the Great, Homer; Scipio Africanus,

Xenophon; Marcus Brutus, Polybius; Charles V., Philip’de Comines; and

‘tis said that, in our times, Machiavelli is elsewhere still in repute;

but the late Marshal Strozzi, who had taken Caesar for his man, doubtless

made the best choice, seeing that it indeed ought to be the breviary of

every soldier, as being the true and sovereign pattern of the military

art. And, moreover, God knows with that grace and beauty he has

embellished that rich matter, with so pure, delicate, and perfect

expression, that, in my opinion, there are no writings in the world

comparable to his, as to that business.

I will set down some rare and particular passages of his wars that remain

in my memory.

His army, being in some consternation upon the rumour that was spread of

the great forces that king Juba was leading against him, instead of

abating the apprehension which his soldiers had conceived at the news and

of lessening to them the forces of the enemy, having called them all

together to encourage and reassure them, he took a quite contrary way to

what we are used to do, for he told them that they need no more trouble

themselves with inquiring after the enemy’s forces, for that he was

certainly informed thereof, and then told them of a number much

surpassing both the truth and the report that was current in his army;

following the advice of Cyrus in Xenophon, forasmuch as the deception is

not of so great importance to find an enemy weaker than we expected, than

to find him really very strong, after having been made to believe that he

was weak.

It was always his use to accustom his soldiers simply to obey, without

taking upon them to control, or so much as to speak of their captain’s

designs, which he never communicated to them but upon the point of

execution; and he took a delight, if they discovered anything of what he

intended, immediately to change his orders to deceive them; and to that

purpose, would often, when he had assigned his quarters in a place, pass

forward and lengthen his day’s march, especially if it was foul and rainy

weather.

The Swiss, in the beginning of his wars in Gaul, having sent to him to

demand a free passage over the Roman territories, though resolved to

hinder them by force, he nevertheless spoke kindly to the messengers, and

took some respite to return an answer, to make use of that time for the

calling his army together. These silly people did not know how good a

husband he was of his time: for he often repeats that it is the best part

of a captain to know how to make use of occasions, and his diligence in

his exploits is, in truth, unheard of and incredible.

If he was not very conscientious in taking advantage of an enemy under

colour of a treaty of agreement, he was as little so in this, that he

required no other virtue in a soldier but valour only, and seldom

punished any other faults but mutiny and disobedience. He would often

after his victories turn them loose to all sorts of licence, dispensing

them for some time from the rules of military discipline, saying withal

that he had soldiers so well trained up that, powdered and perfumed, they

would run furiously to the fight. In truth, he loved to have them richly

armed, and made them wear engraved, gilded, and damasked armour, to the

end that the care of saving it might engage them to a more obstinate

defence. Speaking to them, he called them by the name of

fellow-soldiers, which we yet use; which his successor, Augustus,

reformed, supposing he had only done it upon necessity, and to cajole

those who merely followed him as volunteers:

“Rheni mihi Caesar in undis

Dux erat; hic socius; facinus quos inquinat, aequat:”

[“In the waters of the Rhine Caesar was my general; here at Rome he

is my fellow. Crime levels those whom it polluted.”

--Lucan, v. 289.]

but that this carriage was too mean and low for the dignity of an emperor

and general of an army, and therefore brought up the custom of calling

them soldiers only.

With this courtesy Caesar mixed great severity to keep them in awe; the

ninth legion having mutinied near Placentia, he ignominiously cashiered

them, though Pompey was then yet on foot, and received them not again to

grace till after many supplications; he quieted them more by authority

and boldness than by gentle ways.

In that place where he speaks of his, passage over the Rhine to Germany,

he says that, thinking it unworthy of the honour of the Roman people to

waft over his army in vessels, he built a bridge that they might pass

over dry-foot. There it was that he built that wonderful bridge of which

he gives so particular a description; for he nowhere so willingly dwells

upon his actions as in representing to us the subtlety of his inventions

in such kind of handiwork.

I have also observed this, that he set a great value upon his

exhortations to the soldiers before the fight; for where he would show

that he was either surprised or reduced to a necessity of fighting, he

always brings in this, that he had not so much as leisure to harangue his

army. Before that great battle with those of Tournay, “Caesar,” says he,

“having given order for everything else, presently ran where fortune

carried him to encourage his people, and meeting with the tenth legion,

had no more time to say anything to them but this, that they should

remember their wonted valour; not to be astonished, but bravely sustain

the enemy’s encounter; and seeing the enemy had already approached within

a dart’s cast, he gave the signal for battle; and going suddenly thence

elsewhere, to encourage others, he found that they were already engaged.”

Here is what he tells us in that place. His tongue, indeed, did him

notable service upon several occasions, and his military eloquence was,

in his own time, so highly reputed, that many of his army wrote down his

harangues as he spoke them, by which means there were volumes of them

collected that existed a long time after him. He had so particular a

grace in speaking, that his intimates, and Augustus amongst others,

hearing those orations read, could distinguish even to the phrases and

words that were not his.

The first time that he went out of Rome with any public command, he

arrived in eight days at the river Rhone, having with him in his coach a

secretary or two before him who were continually writing, and him who

carried his sword behind him. And certainly, though a man did nothing

but go on, he could hardly attain that promptitude with which, having

been everywhere victorious in Gaul, he left it, and, following Pompey to

Brundusium, in eighteen days’ time he subdued all Italy; returned from

Brundusium to Rome; from Rome went into the very heart of Spain, where he

surmounted extreme difficulties in the war against Afranius and Petreius,

and in the long siege of Marseilles; thence he returned into Macedonia,

beat the Roman army at Pharsalia, passed thence in pursuit of Pompey into

Egypt, which he also subdued; from Egypt he went into Syria and the

territories of Pontus, where he fought Pharnaces; thence into Africa,

where he defeated Scipio and Juba; again returned through Italy, where he

defeated Pompey’s sons:

“Ocyor et coeli fiammis, et tigride foeta.”

[“Swifter than lightning, or the cub-bearing tigress.”

--Lucan, v. 405]

“Ac veluti montis saxum de, vertice praeceps

Cum ruit avulsum vento, seu turbidus imber

Proluit, aut annis solvit sublapsa vetustas,

Fertur in abruptum magno mons improbus actu,

Exultatque solo, silvas, armenta, virosque,

Involvens secum.”

[“And as a stone torn from the mountain’s top by the wind or rain

torrents, or loosened by age, falls massive with mighty force,

bounds here and there, in its course sweeps from the earth with it

woods, herds, and men.”--AEneid, xii. 684.]

Speaking of the siege of Avaricum, he says, that it, was his custom to be

night and day with the pioneers.--[Engineers. D.W.]--In all enterprises

of consequence he always reconnoitred in person, and never brought his

army into quarters till he had first viewed the place, and, if we may

believe Suetonius, when he resolved to pass over into England, he was the

first man that sounded the passage.

He was wont to say that he more valued a victory obtained by counsel than

by force, and in the war against Petreius and Afranius, fortune

presenting him with an occasion of manifest advantage, he declined it,

saying, that he hoped, with a little more time, but less hazard, to

overthrow his enemies. He there also played a notable part in commanding

his whole army to pass the river by swimming, without any manner of

necessity:

“Rapuitque ruens in praelia miles,

Quod fugiens timuisset, iter; mox uda receptis

Membra fovent armis, gelidosque a gurgite, cursu

Restituunt artus.”

[“The soldier rushing through a way to fight which he would have

been afraid to have taken in flight: then with their armour they

cover wet limbs, and by running restore warmth to their numbed

joints.”--Lucan, iv. 151.]

I find him a little more temperate and considerate in his enterprises

than Alexander, for this man seems to seek and run headlong upon dangers

like an impetuous torrent which attacks and rushes against everything it

meets, without choice or discretion;

“Sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus;

Qui regna Dauni perfluit Appuli,

Dum saevit, horrendamque cultis

Diluviem meditatur agris;”

[“So the biforked Aufidus, which flows through the realm of the

Apulian Daunus, when raging, threatens a fearful deluge to the

tilled ground.”--Horat., Od., iv. 14, 25.]

and, indeed, he was a general in the flower and first heat of his youth,

whereas Caesar took up the trade at a ripe and well advanced age; to

which may be added that Alexander was of a more sanguine, hot, and

choleric constitution, which he also inflamed with wine, from which

Caesar was very abstinent.

But where necessary occasion required, never did any man venture his

person more than he: so much so, that for my part, methinks I read in

many of his exploits a determinate resolution to throw himself away to

avoid the shame of being overcome. In his great battle with those of

Tournay, he charged up to the head of the enemies without his shield,

just as he was seeing the van of his own army beginning to give ground’;

which also several other times befell him. Hearing that his people were

besieged, he passed through the enemy’s army in disguise to go and

encourage them with his presence. Having crossed over to Dyrrachium with

very slender forces, and seeing the remainder of his army which he had

left to Antony’s conduct slow in following him, he undertook alone to

repass the sea in a very great storms and privately stole away to fetch

the rest of his forces, the ports on the other side being seized by

Pompey, and the whole sea being in his possession. And as to what he

performed by force of hand, there are many exploits that in hazard exceed

all the rules of war; for with how small means did he undertake to subdue

the kingdom of Egypt, and afterwards to attack the forces of Scipio and

Juba, ten times greater than his own? These people had, I know not what,

more than human confidence in their fortune; and he was wont to say that

men must embark, and not deliberate, upon high enterprises. After the

battle of Pharsalia, when he had sent his army away before him into Asia,

and was passing in one single vessel the strait of the Hellespont, he met

Lucius Cassius at sea with ten tall men-of-war, when he had the courage

not only to stay his coming, but to sail up to him and summon him to

yield, which he did.

Having undertaken that furious siege of Alexia, where there were

fourscore thousand men in garrison, all Gaul being in arms to raise the

siege and having set an army on foot of a hundred and nine thousand

horse, and of two hundred and forty thousand foot, what a boldness and

vehement confidence was it in him that he would not give over his

attempt, but resolved upon two so great difficulties--which nevertheless

he overcame; and, after having won that great battle against those

without, soon reduced those within to his mercy. The same happened to

Lucullus at the siege of Tigranocerta against King Tigranes, but the

condition of the enemy was not the same, considering the effeminacy of

those with whom Lucullus had to deal. I will here set down two rare and

extraordinary events concerning this siege of Alexia; one, that the Gauls

having drawn their powers together to encounter Caesar, after they had

made a general muster of all their forces, resolved in their council of

war to dismiss a good part of this great multitude, that they might not

fall into confusion. This example of fearing to be too many is new; but,

to take it right, it stands to reason that the body of an army should be

of a moderate greatness, and regulated to certain bounds, both out of

respect to the difficulty of providing for them, and the difficulty of

governing and keeping them in order. At least it is very easy to make it

appear by example that armies monstrous in number have seldom done

anything to purpose. According to the saying of Cyrus in Xenophon,

“‘Tis not the number of men, but the number of good men, that gives the

advantage”: the remainder serving rather to trouble than assist. And

Bajazet principally grounded his resolution of giving Tamerlane battle,

contrary to the opinion of all his captains, upon this, that his enemies

numberless number of men gave him assured hopes of confusion.

Scanderbeg, a very good and expert judge in such matters, was wont to say

that ten or twelve thousand reliable fighting men were sufficient to a

good leader to secure his regulation in all sorts of military occasions.

The other thing I will here record, which seems to be contrary both to

the custom and rules of war, is, that Vercingetorix, who was made general

of all the parts of the revolted Gaul, should go shut up himself in

Alexia: for he who has the command of a whole country ought never to shut

himself up but in case of such last extremity that the only place he has

left is in concern, and that the only hope he has left is in the defence

of that city; otherwise he ought to keep himself always at liberty, that

he may have the means to provide, in general, for all parts of his

government.

To return to Caesar. He grew, in time, more slow and more considerate,

as his friend Oppius witnesses: conceiving that he ought not lightly to

hazard the glory of so many victories, which one blow of fortune might

deprive him of. ‘Tis what the Italians say, when they would reproach the

rashness and foolhardiness of young people, calling them Bisognosi

d’onore, “necessitous of honour,” and that being in so great a want and

dearth of reputation, they have reason to seek it at what price soever,

which they ought not to do who have acquired enough already. There may

reasonably be some moderation, some satiety, in this thirst and appetite

of glory, as well as in other things: and there are enough people who

practise it.

He was far remote from the religious scruples of the ancient Romans, who

would never prevail in their wars but by dint of pure and simple valour;

and yet he was more conscientious than we should be in these days, and

did not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory. In the war

against Ariovistus, whilst he was parleying with him, there happened some

commotion between the horsemen, which was occasioned by the fault of

Ariovistus’ light horse, wherein, though Caesar saw he had a very great

advantage of the enemy, he would make no use on’t, lest he should have

been reproached with a treacherous proceeding.

He was always wont to wear rich garments, and of a shining colour in

battle, that he might be the more remarkable and better observed.

He always carried a stricter and tighter hand over his soldiers when near

an enemy. When the ancient Greeks would accuse any one of extreme

insufficiency, they would say, in common proverb, that he could neither

read nor swim; he was of the same opinion, that swimming was of great use

in war, and himself found it so; for when he had to use diligence, he

commonly swam over the rivers in his way; for he loved to march on foot,

as also did Alexander the Great. Being in Egypt forced, to save himself,

to go into a little boat, and so many people leaping in with him that it

was in danger of sinking, he chose rather to commit himself to the sea,

and swam to his fleet, which lay two hundred paces off, holding in his

left hand his tablets, and drawing his coatarmour in his teeth, that it

might not fall into the enemy’s hand, and at this time he was of a pretty

advanced age.

Never had any general so much credit with his soldiers: in the beginning

of the civil wars, his centurions offered him to find every one a

man-at-arms at his own charge, and the foot soldiers to serve him at

their own expense; those who were most at their ease, moreover,

undertaking to defray the more necessitous. The late Admiral Chastillon

[Gaspard de Coligny, assassinated in the St. Bartholomew

massacre, 24th August 1572.]

showed us the like example in our civil wars; for the French of his army

provided money out of their own purses to pay the foreigners that were

with him. There are but rarely found examples of so ardent and so ready

an affection amongst the soldiers of elder times, who kept themselves

strictly to their rules of war: passion has a more absolute command over

us than reason; and yet it happened in the war against Hannibal, that by

the example of the people of Rome in the city, the soldiers and captains

refused their pay in the army, and in Marcellus’ camp those were branded

with the name of Mercenaries who would receive any. Having got the worst

of it near Dyrrachium, his soldiers came and offered themselves to be

chastised and punished, so that there was more need to comfort than

reprove them. One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey’s

legions above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with

arrows, so that there were a hundred and thirty thousand shafts found in

the trenches. A soldier called Scaeva, who commanded at one of the

avenues, invincibly maintained his ground, having lost an eye, with one

shoulder and one thigh shot through, and his shield hit in two hundred

and thirty places. It happened that many of his soldiers being taken

prisoners, rather chose to die than promise to join the contrary side.

Granius Petronius was taken by Scipio in Africa: Scipio having put the

rest to death, sent him word that he gave him his life, for he was a man

of quality and quaestor, to whom Petronius sent answer back, that

Caesar’s soldiers were wont to give others their life, and not to receive

it; and immediately with his own hand killed himself.

Of their fidelity there are infinite examples amongst them, that which

was done by those who were besieged in Salona, a city that stood for

Caesar against Pompey, is not, for the rarity of an accident that there

happened, to be forgotten. Marcus Octavius kept them close besieged;

they within being reduced to the extremest necessity of all things, so

that to supply the want of men, most of them being either slain or

wounded, they had manumitted all their slaves, and had been constrained

to cut off all the women’s hair to make ropes for their war engines,

besides a wonderful dearth of victuals, and yet continuing resolute never

to yield. After having drawn the siege to a great length, by which

Octavius was grown more negligent and less attentive to his enterprise,

they made choice of one day about noon, and having first placed the women

and children upon the walls to make a show, sallied upon the besiegers

with such fury, that having routed the first, second, and third body, and

afterwards the fourth, and the rest, and beaten them all out of their

trenches, they pursued them even to their ships, and Octavius himself was

fain to fly to Dyrrachium, where Pompey lay. I do not at present

remember that I have met with any other example where the besieged ever

gave the besieger a total defeat and won the field, nor that a sortie

ever achieved the result of a pure and entire victory.

CHAPTER XXXV

OF THREE GOOD WOMEN

They are not by the dozen, as every one knows, and especially in the

duties of marriage, for that is a bargain full of so many nice

circumstances that ‘tis hard a woman’s will should long endure such a

restraint; men, though their condition be something better under that

tie, have yet enough to do. The true touch and test of a happy marriage

have respect to the time of the companionship, if it has been constantly

gentle, loyal, and agreeable. In our age, women commonly reserve the

publication of their good offices, and their vehement affection towards

their husbands, until they have lost them, or at least, till then defer

the testimonies of their good will; a too slow testimony and

unseasonable. By it they rather manifest that they never loved them till

dead: their life is nothing but trouble; their death full of love and

courtesy. As fathers conceal their affection from their children, women,

likewise, conceal theirs from their husbands, to maintain a modest

respect. This mystery is not for my palate; ‘tis to much purpose that

they scratch themselves and tear their hair. I whisper in a

waiting-woman’s or secretary’s ear: “How were they, how did they live

together?” I always have that good saying m my head:

“Jactantius moerent, quae minus dolent.”

[“They make the most ado who are least concerned.” (Or:)

“They mourn the more ostentatiously, the less they grieve.”

--Tacitus, Annal., ii. 77, writing of Germanicus.]

Their whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead. We

should willingly give them leave to laugh after we are dead, provided

they will smile upon us whilst we are alive. Is it not enough to make a

man revive in pure spite, that she, who spat in my face whilst I was in

being, shall come to kiss my feet when I am no more? If there be any

honour in lamenting a husband, it only appertains to those who smiled

upon them whilst they had them; let those who wept during their lives

laugh at their deaths, as well outwardly as within. Therefore, never

regard those blubbered eyes and that pitiful voice; consider her

deportment, her complexion, the plumpness of her cheeks under all those

formal veils; ‘tis there she talks plain French. There are few who do

not mend upon’t, and health is a quality that cannot lie. That starched

and ceremonious countenance looks not so much back as forward, and is

rather intended to get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was

a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, the widow

of a prince, wore somewhat more ornament in her dress than our laws of

widowhood allow, and being reproached with it, she made answer that it

was because she was resolved to have no more love affairs, and would

never marry again.

I have here, not at all dissenting from our customs, made choice of three

women, who have also expressed the utmost of their goodness and affection

about their husbands’ deaths; yet are they examples of another kind than

are now m use, and so austere that they will hardly be drawn into

imitation.

The younger Pliny’ had near a house of his in Italy a neighbour who was

exceedingly tormented with certain ulcers in his private parts. His wife

seeing him so long to languish, entreated that he would give her leave to

see and at leisure to consider of the condition of his disease, and that

she would freely tell him what she thought. This permission being

obtained, and she having curiously examined the business, found it

impossible he could ever be cured, and that all he had to hope for or

expect was a great while to linger out a painful and miserable life, and

therefore, as the most sure and sovereign remedy, resolutely advised him

to kill himself. But finding him a little tender and backward in so rude

an attempt: “Do not think, my friend,” said she, “that the torments I see

thee endure are not as sensible to me as to thyself, and that to deliver

myself from them, I will not myself make use of the same remedy I have

prescribed to thee. I will accompany thee in the cure as I have done in

the disease; fear nothing, but believe that we shall have pleasure in

this passage that is to free us from so many miseries, and we will go

happily together.” Which having said, and roused up her husband’s

courage, she resolved that they should throw themselves headlong into the

sea out of a window that overlooked it, and that she might maintain to

the last the loyal and vehement affection wherewith she had embraced him

during his life, she would also have him die in her arms; but lest they

should fail, and should quit their hold in the fall through fear, she

tied herself fast to him by the waist, and so gave up her own life to

procure her husband’s repose. This was a woman of mean condition; and,

amongst that class of people, ‘tis no very new thing to see some examples

of rare virtue:

“Extrema per illos

Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit.”

[“Justice, when she left the earth, took her last

steps among them.”--Virgil, Georg., ii. 473.]

The other two were noble and rich, where examples of virtue are rarely

lodged.

Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, a consular person, was the mother of

another Arria, the wife of Thrasea Paetus, he whose virtue was so

renowned in the time of Nero, and by this son-in-law, the grandmother of

Fannia: for the resemblance of the names of these men and women, and

their fortunes, have led to several mistakes. This first Arria, her

husband Caecina Paetus, having been taken prisoner by some of the Emperor

Claudius’ people, after Scribonianus’ defeat, whose party he had embraced

in the war, begged of those who were to carry him prisoner to Rome, that

they would take her into their ship, where she would be of much less

charge and trouble to them than a great many persons they must otherwise

have to attend her husband, and that she alone would undertake to serve

him in his chamber, his kitchen, and all other offices. They refused,

whereupon she put herself into a fisher-boat she hired on the spot, and

in that manner followed him from Sclavonia. When she had come to Rome,

Junia, the widow of Scribonianus, having one day, from the resemblance of

their fortune, accosted her in the Emperor’s presence; she rudely

repulsed her with these words, “I,” said she, “speak to thee, or give ear

to any thing thou sayest! to thee in whose lap Scribonianus was slain,

and thou art yet alive!” These words, with several other signs, gave her

friends to understand that she would undoubtedly despatch herself,

impatient of supporting her husband’s misfortune. And Thrasea, her

son-in-law, beseeching her not to throw away herself, and saying to her,

“What! if I should run the same fortune that Caecina has done, would you

that your daughter, my wife, should do the same?”--“Would I?” replied

she, “yes, yes, I would: if she had lived as long, and in as good

understanding with thee as I have done, with my husband.” These answers

made them more careful of her, and to have a more watchful eye to her

proceedings. One day, having said to those who looked to her: “Tis to

much purpose that you take all this pains to prevent me; you may indeed

make me die an ill death, but to keep me from dying is not in your

power”; she in a sudden phrenzy started from a chair whereon she sat, and

with all her force dashed her head against the wall, by which blow being

laid flat in a swoon, and very much wounded, after they had again with

great ado brought her to herself: “I told you,” said she, “that if you

refused me some easy way of dying, I should find out another, how painful

soever.” The conclusion of so admirable a virtue was this: her husband

Paetus, not having resolution enough of his own to despatch himself, as

he was by the emperor’s cruelty enjoined, one day, amongst others, after

having first employed all the reasons and exhortations which she thought

most prevalent to persuade him to it, she snatched the poignard he wore

from his side, and holding it ready in her hand, for the conclusion of

her admonitions; “Do thus, Paetus,” said she, and in the same instant

giving herself a mortal stab in the breast, and then drawing it out of

the wound, presented it to him, ending her life with this noble,

generous, and immortal saying, “Paete, non dolet”--having time to

pronounce no more but those three never-to-be-forgotten words: “Paetus,

it is not painful.”

“Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,

Quern de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis

Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit,

Sed quod to facies, id mihi, Paete, dolet.”

[“When the chaste Arria gave to Poetus the reeking sword she had

drawn from her breast, ‘If you believe me,’ she said, ‘Paetus, the

wound I have made hurts not, but ‘tis that which thou wilt make that

hurts me.’”---Martial, i. 14.]

The action was much more noble in itself, and of a braver sense than the

poet expressed it: for she was so far from being deterred by the thought

of her husband’s wound and death and her own, that she had been their

promotress and adviser: but having performed this high and courageous

enterprise for her husband’s only convenience, she had even in the last

gasp of her life no other concern but for him, and of dispossessing him

of the fear of dying with her. Paetus presently struck himself to the

heart with the same weapon, ashamed, I suppose, to have stood in need of

so dear and precious an example.

Pompeia Paulina, a young and very noble Roman lady, had married Seneca in

his extreme old age. Nero, his fine pupil, sent his guards to him to

denounce the sentence of death, which was performed after this manner:

When the Roman emperors of those times had condemned any man of quality,

they sent to him by their officers to choose what death he would, and to

execute it within such or such a time, which was limited, according to

the degree of their indignation, to a shorter or a longer respite, that

they might therein have better leisure to dispose their affairs, and

sometimes depriving them of the means of doing it by the shortness of the

time; and if the condemned seemed unwilling to submit to the order, they

had people ready at hand to execute it either by cutting the veins of the

arms and legs, or by compelling them by force to swallow a draught of

poison. But persons of honour would not abide this necessity, but made

use of their own physicians and surgeons for this purpose. Seneca, with

a calm and steady countenance, heard their charge, and presently called

for paper to write his will, which being by the captain refused, he

turned himself towards his friends, saying to them, “Since I cannot leave

you any other acknowledgment of the obligation I have to you, I leave you

at least the best thing I have, namely, the image of my life and manners,

which I entreat you to keep in memory of me, that by so doing you may

acquire the glory of sincere and real friends.” And there withal, one

while appeasing the sorrow he saw in them with gentle words, and

presently raising his voice to reprove them: “What,” said he, “are become

of all our brave philosophical precepts? What are become of all the

provisions we have so many years laid up against the accidents of

fortune? Is Nero’s cruelty unknown to us? What could we expect from him

who had murdered his mother and his brother, but that he should put his

tutor to death who had brought him up?” After having spoken these words

in general, he turned himself towards his wife, and embracing her fast in

his arms, as, her heart and strength failing her, she was ready to sink

down with grief, he begged of her, for his sake, to bear this accident

with a little more patience, telling her, that now the hour was come

wherein he was to show, not by argument and discourse, but effect, the

fruit he had acquired by his studies, and that he really embraced his

death, not only without grief, but moreover with joy. “Wherefore, my

dearest,” said he, “do not dishonour it with thy tears, that it may not

seem as if thou lovest thyself more than my reputation. Moderate thy

grief, and comfort thyself in the knowledge thou hast had of me and my

actions, leading the remainder of thy life in the same virtuous manner

thou hast hitherto done.” To which Paulina, having a little recovered

her spirits, and warmed the magnanimity of her courage with a most

generous affection, replied,--“No, Seneca,” said she, “I am not a woman

to suffer you to go alone in such a necessity: I will not have you think

that the virtuous examples of your life have not taught me how to die;

and when can I ever better or more fittingly do it, or more to my own

desire, than with you? and therefore assure yourself I will go along with

you.” Then Seneca, taking this noble and generous resolution of his wife

m good part, and also willing to free himself from the fear of leaving

her exposed to the cruelty of his enemies after his death: “I have,

Paulina,” said he, “instructed thee in what would serve thee happily to

live; but thou more covetest, I see, the honour of dying: in truth,

I will not grudge it thee; the constancy and resolution in our common end

are the same, but the beauty and glory of thy part are much greater.”

Which being said, the surgeons, at the same time, opened the veins of

both their arms, but as those of Seneca were more shrunk up, as well with

age as abstinence, made his blood flow too slowly, he moreover commanded

them to open the veins of his thighs; and lest the torments he endured

might pierce his wife’s heart, and also to free himself from the

affliction of seeing her in so sad a condition, after having taken a very

affectionate leave of her, he entreated she would suffer them to carry

her into her chamber, which they accordingly did. But all these

incisions being not yet enough to make him die, he commanded Statius

Anneus, his physician, to give him a draught of poison, which had not

much better effect; for by reason of the weakness and coldness of his

limbs, it could not arrive at his heart. Wherefore they were forced to

superadd a very hot bath, and then, feeling his end approach, whilst he

had breath he continued excellent discourses upon the subject of his

present condition, which the secretaries wrote down so long as they could

hear his voice, and his last words were long after in high honour and

esteem amongst men, and it is a great loss to us that they have not come

down to our times. Then, feeling the last pangs of death, with the

bloody water of the bath he bathed his head, saying: “This water I

dedicate to Jupiter the deliverer.” Nero, being presently informed of

all this, fearing lest the death of Paulina, who was one of the best-born

ladies of Rome, and against whom he had no particular unkindness, should

turn to his reproach, sent orders in all haste to bind up her wounds,

which her attendants did without her knowledge, she being already half

dead, and without all manner of sense. Thus, though she lived contrary

to her own design, it was very honourably, and befitting her own virtue,

her pale complexion ever after manifesting how much life had run from her

veins.

These are my three very true stories, which I find as entertaining and as

tragic as any of those we make out of our own heads wherewith to amuse

the common people; and I wonder that they who are addicted to such

relations, do not rather cull out ten thousand very fine stories, which

are to be found in books, that would save them the trouble of invention,

and be more useful and diverting; and he who would make a whole and

connected body of them would need to add nothing of his own, but the

connection only, as it were the solder of another metal; and might by

this means embody a great many true events of all sorts, disposing and

diversifying them according as the beauty of the work should require,

after the same manner, almost, as Ovid has made up his Metamorphoses of

the infinite number of various fables.

In the last couple, this is, moreover, worthy of consideration, that

Paulina voluntarily offered to lose her life for the love of her husband,

and that her husband had formerly also forborne to die for the love of

her. We may think there is no just counterpoise in this exchange; but,

according to his stoical humour, I fancy he thought he had done as much

for her, in prolonging his life upon her account, as if he had died for

her. In one of his letters to Lucilius, after he has given him to

understand that, being seized with an ague in Rome, he presently took

coach to go to a house he had in the country, contrary to his wife’s

opinion, who would have him stay, and that he had told her that the ague

he was seized with was not a fever of the body but of the place, it

follows thus: “She let me go,” says he, “giving me a strict charge of my

health. Now I, who know that her life is involved in mine, begin to make

much of myself, that I may preserve her. And I lose the privilege my age

has given me, of being more constant and resolute in many things, when I

call to mind that in this old fellow there is a young girl who is

interested in his health. And since I cannot persuade her to love me

more courageously, she makes me more solicitously love myself: for we

must allow something to honest affections, and, sometimes, though

occasions importune us to the contrary, we must call back life, even

though it be with torment: we must hold the soul fast in our teeth, since

the rule of living, amongst good men, is not so long as they please, but

as long as they ought. He that loves not his wife nor his friend so well

as to prolong his life for them, but will obstinately die, is too

delicate and too effeminate: the soul must impose this upon itself, when

the utility of our friends so requires; we must sometimes lend ourselves

to our friends, and when we would die for ourselves must break that

resolution for them. ‘Tis a testimony of grandeur of courage to return

to life for the consideration of another, as many excellent persons have

done: and ‘tis a mark of singular good nature to preserve old age (of

which the greatest convenience is the indifference as to its duration,

and a more stout and disdainful use of life), when a man perceives that

this office is pleasing, agreeable, and useful to some person by whom he

is very much beloved. And a man reaps by it a very pleasing reward; for

what can be more delightful than to be so dear to his wife, as upon her

account he shall become dearer to himself? Thus has my Paulina loaded me

not only with her fears, but my own; it has not been sufficient to

consider how resolutely I could die, but I have also considered how

irresolutely she would bear my death. I am enforced to live, and

sometimes to live in magnanimity.” These are his own words, as excellent

as they everywhere are.

CHAPTER XXXVI

OF THE MOST EXCELLENT MEN

If I should be asked my choice among all the men who have come to my

knowledge, I should make answer, that methinks I find three more

excellent than all the rest.

One of them Homer: not that Aristotle and Varro, for example, were not,

peradventure, as learned as he; nor that possibly Virgil was not equal to

him in his own art, which I leave to be determined by such as know them

both. I who, for my part, understand but one of them, can only say this,

according to my poor talent, that I do not believe the Muses themselves

could ever go beyond the Roman:

“Tale facit carmen docta testudine, quale

Cynthius impositis temperat articulis:”

[“He plays on his learned lute a verse such as Cynthian Apollo

modulates with his imposed fingers.”--Propertius, ii. 34, 79.]

and yet in this judgment we are not to forget that it is chiefly from

Homer that Virgil derives his excellence, that he is guide and teacher;

and that one touch of the Iliad has supplied him with body and matter out

of which to compose his great and divine AEneid. I do not reckon upon

that, but mix several other circumstances that render to me this poet

admirable, even as it were above human condition. And, in truth, I often

wonder that he who has produced, and, by his authority, given reputation

in the world to so many deities, was not deified himself. Being blind

and poor, living before the sciences were reduced into rule and certain

observation, he was so well acquainted with them, that all those who have

since taken upon them to establish governments, to carry on wars, and to

write either of religion or philosophy, of what sect soever, or of the

arts, have made use of him as of a most perfect instructor in the

knowledge of all things, and of his books as of a treasury of all sorts

of learning:

“Qui, quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,

Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit:”

[“Who tells us what is good, what evil, what useful, what not, more

clearly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor?”

--Horace, Ep., i. 2, 3.]

and as this other says,

“A quo, ceu fonte perenni,

Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis”

[“From which, as from a perennial spring, the lips of the poets

are moistened by Pierian waters.”--Ovid, Amoy., iii. 9, 25.]

and the other,

“Adde Heliconiadum comites, quorum unus Homerus

Sceptra potitus;”

[“Add the companions of the Muses, whose sceptre Homer has solely

obtained.”--Lucretius, iii. 1050.]

and the other:

“Cujusque ex ore profusos

Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit,

Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos.

Unius foecunda bonis.”

[“From whose mouth all posterity has drawn out copious streams of

verse, and has made bold to turn the mighty river into its little

rivulets, fertile in the property of one man.”

--Manilius, Astyon., ii. 8.]

‘Tis contrary to the order of nature that he has made the most excellent

production that can possibly be; for the ordinary birth of things is

imperfect; they thrive and gather strength by growing, whereas he

rendered the infancy of poesy and several other sciences mature, perfect,

and accomplished at first. And for this reason he may be called the

first and the last of the poets, according to the fine testimony

antiquity has left us of him, “that as there was none before him whom he

could imitate, so there has been none since that could imitate him.”

His words, according to Aristotle, are the only words that have motion

and action, the only substantial words. Alexander the Great, having

found a rich cabinet amongst Darius’ spoils, gave order it should be

reserved for him to keep his Homer in, saying: that he was the best and

most faithful counsellor he had in his military affairs. For the same

reason it was that Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, said that he was

the poet of the Lacedaemonians, for that he was an excellent master for

the discipline of war. This singular and particular commendation is also

left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the only author in

the world that never glutted nor disgusted his readers, presenting

himself always another thing, and always flourishing in some new grace.

That wanton Alcibiades, having asked one, who pretended to learning, for

a book of Homer, gave him a box of the ear because he had none, which he

thought as scandalous as we should if we found one of our priests without

a Breviary. Xenophanes complained one day to Hiero, the tyrant of

Syracuse, that he was so poor he had not wherewithal to maintain two

servants. “What!” replied he, “Homer, who was much poorer than thou

art, keeps above ten thousand, though he is dead.” What did Panaetius

leave unsaid when he called Plato the Homer of the philosophers? Besides

what glory can be compared to his? Nothing is so frequent in men’s

mouths as his name and works, nothing so known and received as Troy,

Helen, and the war about her, when perhaps there was never any such

thing. Our children are still called by names that he invented above

three thousand years ago; who does not know Hector and Achilles? Not

only some particular families, but most nations also seek their origin in

his inventions. Mohammed, the second of that name, emperor of the Turks,

writing to our Pope Pius II., “I am astonished,” says he, “that the

Italians should appear against me, considering that we have our common

descent from the Trojans, and that it concerns me as well as it does them

to revenge the blood of Hector upon the Greeks, whom they countenance

against me.” Is it not a noble farce wherein kings, republics, and

emperors have so many ages played their parts, and to which the vast

universe serves for a theatre? Seven Grecian cities contended for his

birth, so much honour even his obscurity helped him to!

“Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenm.”

The other is Alexander the Great. For whoever will consider the age at

which he began his enterprises, the small means by which he effected so

glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the

greatest and most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was

followed, the extraordinary favour wherewith fortune embraced and

favoured so many hazardous, not to say rash, exploits,

“Impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti

Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruins;”

[“Bearing down all who sought to withstand him, and pleased

to force his way by ruin.”--Lucan, i. 149.]

that greatness, to have at the age of three-and-thirty years, passed

victorious through the whole habitable earth, and in half a life to have

attained to the utmost of what human nature can do; so that you cannot

imagine its just duration and the continuation of his increase in valour

and fortune, up to a due maturity of age, but that you must withal

imagine something more than man: to have made so many royal branches to

spring from his soldiers, leaving the world, at his death, divided

amongst four successors, simple captains of his army, whose posterity so

long continued and maintained that vast possession; so many excellent

virtues as he was master of, justice, temperance, liberality, truth in

his word, love towards his own people, and humanity towards those he

overcame; for his manners, in general, seem in truth incapable of any

manner of reproach, although some particular and extraordinary actions of

his may fall under censure. But it is impossible to carry on such great

things as he did within the strict rules of justice; such as he are to be

judged in gross by the main end of their actions. The ruin of Thebes and

Persepolis, the murder of Menander and of Ephistion’s physician, the

massacre of so many Persian prisoners at one time, of a troop of Indian

soldiers not without prejudice to his word, and of the Cossians, so much

as to the very children, are indeed sallies that are not well to be

excused. For, as to Clytus, the fault was more than redeemed; and that

very action, as much as any other whatever, manifests the goodness of his

nature, a nature most excellently formed to goodness; and it was

ingeniously said of him, that he had his virtues from Nature, his vices

from Fortune. As to his being a little given to bragging, a little too

impatient of hearing himself ill-spoken of, and as to those mangers,

arms, and bits he caused to be strewed in the Indies, all those little

vanities, methinks, may very well be allowed to his youth, and the

prodigious prosperity of his fortune. And who will consider withal his

so many military virtues, his diligence, foresight, patience, discipline,

subtlety, magnanimity, resolution, and good fortune, wherein (though we

had not had the authority of Hannibal to assure us) he was the first of

men, the admirable beauty and symmetry of his person, even to a miracle,

his majestic port and awful mien, in a face so young, ruddy, and radiant:

“Qualis, ubi Oceani perfusus Lucifer unda,

Quem Venus ante alios astrorum diligit ignes,

Extulit os sacrum coelo, tenebrasque resolvit;”

[“As when, bathed in the waves of Ocean, Lucifer, whom Venus loves

beyond the other stars, has displayed his sacred countenance to the

heaven, and disperses the darkness”--AEneid, iii. 589.]

the excellence of his knowledge and capacity; the duration and grandeur

of his glory, pure, clean, without spot or envy, and that long after his

death it was a religious belief that his very medals brought good fortune

to all who carried them about them; and that more kings and princes have

written his actions than other historians have written the actions of any

other king or prince whatever; and that to this very day the Mohammedans,

who despise all other histories, admit of and honour his alone, by a

special privilege: whoever, I say, will seriously consider these

particulars, will confess that, all these things put together, I had

reason to prefer him before Caesar himself, who alone could make me

doubtful in my choice: and it cannot be denied that there was more of his

own in his exploits, and more of fortune in those of Alexander. They

were in many things equal, and peradventure Caesar had some greater

qualities they were two fires, or two torrents, overrunning the world by

several ways;

“Ac velut immissi diversis partibus ignes

Arentem in silvam, et virgulta sonantia lauro

Aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis

Dant sonitum spumosi amnes, et in aequora currunt,

Quisque suum populatus iter:”

[“And as fires applied in several parts to a dry wood and crackling

shrubs of laurel, or as with impetuous fall from the steep

mountains, foaming torrents pour down to the ocean, each clearing a

destructive course.”--AEneid, xii. 521.]

but though Caesar’s ambition had been more moderate, it would still be so

unhappy, having the ruin of his country and universal mischief to the

world for its abominable object, that, all things raked together and put

into the balance, I must needs incline to Alexander’s side.

The third and in my opinion the most excellent, is Epaminondas. Of glory

he has not near so much as the other two (which, for that matter, is but

a part of the substance of the thing): of valour and resolution, not of

that sort which is pushed on by ambition, but of that which wisdom and

reason can plant in a regular soul, he had all that could be imagined.

Of this virtue of his, he has, in my idea, given as ample proof as

Alexander himself or Caesar: for although his warlike exploits were

neither so frequent nor so full, they were yet, if duly considered in all

their circumstances, as important, as bravely fought, and carried with

them as manifest testimony of valour and military conduct, as those of

any whatever. The Greeks have done him the honour, without

contradiction, to pronounce him the greatest man of their nation; and to

be the first of Greece, is easily to be the first of the world. As to

his knowledge, we have this ancient judgment of him, “That never any man

knew so much, and spake so little as he”;--[Plutarch, On the Demon of

Socrates, c. 23.]--for he was of the Pythagorean sect; but when he did

speak, never any man spake better; an excellent orator, and of powerful

persuasion. But as to his manners and conscience, he infinitely

surpassed all men who ever undertook the management of affairs; for in

this one thing, which ought chiefly to be considered, which alone truly

denotes us for what we are, and which alone I make counterbalance all the

rest put together, he comes not short of any philosopher whatever, not

even of Socrates himself. Innocence, in this man, is a quality peculiar,

sovereign, constant, uniform, incorruptible, compared with which, it

appears in Alexander subject to something else subaltern, uncertain,

variable, effeminate, and fortuitous.

Antiquity has judged that in thoroughly sifting all the other great

captains, there is found in every one some peculiar quality that

illustrates his name: in this man only there is a full and equal virtue

throughout, that leaves nothing to be wished for in him, whether in

private or public employment, whether in peace or war; whether to live

gloriously and grandly, and to die: I do not know any form or fortune of

man that I so much honour and love.

‘Tis true that I look upon his obstinate poverty, as it is set out by his

best friends, as a little too scrupulous and nice; and this is the only

feature, though high in itself and well worthy of admiration, that I find

so rugged as not to desire to imitate, to the degree it was in him.

Scipio AEmilianus alone, could one attribute to him as brave and

magnificent an end, and as profound and universal a knowledge, might be

put into the other scale of the balance. Oh, what an injury has time

done me to deprive me of the sight of two of the most noble lives which,

by the common consent of all the world, one of the greatest of the

Greeks, and the other of the Romans, were in all Plutarch. What a

matter! what a workman!

For a man that was no saint, but, as we say, a gentleman, of civilian and

ordinary manners, and of a moderate ambition, the richest life that I

know, and full of the richest and most to be desired parts, all things

considered, is, in my opinion, that of Alcibiades.

But as to what concerns Epaminondas, I will here, for the example of an

excessive goodness, add some of his opinions: he declared, that the

greatest satisfaction he ever had in his whole life, was the contentment

he gave his father and mother by his victory at Leuctra; wherein his

deference is great, preferring their pleasure before his own, so dust and

so full of so glorious an action. He did not think it lawful, even to

restore the liberty of his country, to kill a man without knowing a

cause: which made him so cold in the enterprise of his companion

Pelopidas for the relief of Thebes. He was also of opinion that men in

battle ought to avoid the encounter of a friend who was on the contrary

side, and to spare him. And his humanity, even towards his enemies

themselves, having rendered him suspected to the Boeotians, for that,

after he had miraculously forced the Lacedaemonians to open to him the

pass which they had undertaken to defend at the entrance into the Morea,

near Corinth, he contented himself with having charged through them,

without pursuing them to the utmost, he had his commission of general

taken from him, very honourably upon such an account, and for the shame

it was to them upon necessity afterwards to restore him to his command,

and so to manifest how much upon him depended their safety and honour;

victory like a shadow attending him wherever he went; and indeed the

prosperity of his country, as being from him derived, died with him.

CHAPTER XXXVII

OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS

This faggoting up of so many divers pieces is so done that I never set

pen to paper but when I have too much idle time, and never anywhere but

at home; so that it is compiled after divers interruptions and intervals,

occasions keeping me sometimes many months elsewhere. As to the rest,

I never correct my first by any second conceptions; I, peradventure, may

alter a word or so, but ‘tis only to vary the phrase, and not to destroy

my former meaning. I have a mind to represent the progress of my

humours, and that every one may see each piece as it came from the forge.

I could wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice of the course

of my mutations. A servant of mine whom I employed to transcribe for me,

thought he had got a prize by stealing several pieces from me, wherewith

he was best pleased; but it is my comfort that he will be no greater a

gainer than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older by seven

or eight years since I began; nor has it been without same new

acquisition: I have, in that time, by the liberality of years, been

acquainted with the stone: their commerce and long converse do not well

pass away without some such inconvenience. I could have been glad that

of other infirmities age has to present long-lived men withal, it had

chosen some one that would have been more welcome to me, for it could not

possibly have laid upon me a disease for which, even from my infancy, I

have had so great a horror; and it is, in truth, of all the accidents of

old age, that of which I have ever been most afraid. I have often

thought with myself that I went on too far, and that in so long a voyage

I should at last run myself into some disadvantage; I perceived, and have

often enough declared, that it was time to depart, and that life should

be cut off in the sound and living part, according to the surgeon’s rule

in amputations; and that nature made him pay very strict usury who did

not in due time pay the principal. And yet I was so far from being

ready, that in the eighteen months’ time or thereabout that I have been

in this uneasy condition, I have so inured myself to it as to be content

to live on in it; and have found wherein to comfort myself, and to hope:

so much are men enslaved to their miserable being, that there is no

condition so wretched they will not accept, provided they may live! Hear

Maecenas:

“Debilem facito manu,

Debilem pede, coxa,

Lubricos quate dentes;

Vita dum superest, bene est.”

[“Cripple my hand, foot, hip; shake out my loose teeth: while

there’s life, ‘tis well.”--Apud Seneca, Ep., 101.]

And Tamerlane, with a foolish humanity, palliated the fantastic cruelty

he exercised upon lepers, when he put all he could hear of to death, to

deliver them, as he pretended, from the painful life they lived. For

there was not one of them who would not rather have been thrice a leper

than be not. And Antisthenes the Stoic, being very sick, and crying out,

“Who will deliver me from these evils?” Diogenes, who had come to visit

him, “This,” said he, presenting him a knife, “soon enough, if thou

wilt.”--“I do not mean from my life,” he replied, “but from my

sufferings.” The sufferings that only attack the mind, I am not so

sensible of as most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the

world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the

expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a

dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not

point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best

parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am

very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with

a sight weak and delicate and softened with the long and happy health and

quiet that God has been pleased to give me the greatest part of my time,

I had in my imagination fancied them so insupportable, that, in truth, I

was more afraid than I have since found I had cause: by which I am still

more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the soul, as

we employ them, more trouble the repose of life than they are any way

useful to it.

I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the

most mortal, and the most irremediable of all diseases; I have already

had the trial of five or six very long and very painful fits; and yet I

either flatter myself, or there is even in this state what is very well

to be endured by a man who has his soul free from the fear of death, and

of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences which physic is ever

thundering in our ears; but the effect even of pain itself is not so

sharp and intolerable as to put a man of understanding into rage and

despair. I have at least this advantage by my stone, that what I could

not hitherto prevail upon myself to resolve upon, as to reconciling and

acquainting myself with death, it will perfect; for the more it presses

upon and importunes me, I shall be so much the less afraid to die. I had

already gone so far as only to love life for life’s sake, but my pain

will dissolve this intelligence; and God grant that in the end, should

the sharpness of it be once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does

not throw me into the other no less vicious extreme to desire and wish to

die!

“Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes:”

[“Neither to wish, nor fear to die.” (Or:)

“Thou shouldest neither fear nor desire the last day.”

--Martial, x. 7.]

they are two passions to be feared; but the one has its remedy much

nearer at hand than the other.

As to the rest, I have always found the precept that so rigorously

enjoins a resolute countenance and disdainful and indifferent comportment

in the toleration of infirmities to be ceremonial. Why should

philosophy, which only has respect to life and effects, trouble itself

about these external appearances? Let us leave that care to actors and

masters of rhetoric, who set so great a value upon our gestures. Let her

allow this vocal frailty to disease, if it be neither cordial nor

stomachic, and permit the ordinary ways of expressing grief by sighs,

sobs, palpitations, and turning pale, that nature has put out of our

power; provided the courage be undaunted, and the tones not expressive

of despair, let her be satisfied. What matter the wringing of our hands,

if we do not wring our thoughts? She forms us for ourselves, not for

others; to be, not to seem; let her be satisfied with governing our

understanding, which she has taken upon her the care of instructing;

that, in the fury of the colic, she maintain the soul in a condition to

know itself, and to follow its accustomed way, contending with, and

enduring, not meanly truckling under pain; moved and heated, not subdued

and conquered, in the contention; capable of discourse and other things,

to a certain degree. In such extreme accidents, ‘tis cruelty to require

so exact a composedness. ‘Tis no great matter that we make a wry face,

if the mind plays its part well: if the body find itself relieved by

complaining let it complain: if agitation ease it, let it tumble and toss

at pleasure; if it seem to find the disease evaporate (as some physicians

hold that it helps women in delivery) in making loud outcries, or if this

do but divert its torments, let it roar as it will. Let us not command

this voice to sally, but stop it not. Epicurus, not only forgives his

sage for crying out in torments, but advises him to it:

“Pugiles etiam, quum feriunt, in jactandis caestibus

ingemiscunt, quia profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur,

venitque plaga vehementior.”

[“Boxers also, when they strike, groan in the act, because with the

strength of voice the whole body is carried, and the blow comes with

the greater vehemence.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 23.]

We have enough to do to deal with the disease, without troubling

ourselves with these superfluous rules.

Which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see impatient in the

assaults of this malady; for as to what concerns myself, I have passed it

over hitherto with a little better countenance, and contented myself with

groaning without roaring out; not, nevertheless, that I put any great

constraint upon myself to maintain this exterior decorum, for I make

little account of such an advantage: I allow herein as much as the pain

requires; but either my pains are not so excessive, or I have more than

ordinary patience. I complain, I confess, and am a little impatient in a

very sharp fit, but I do not arrive to such a degree of despair as he who

with:

“Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus

Resonando, multum flebiles voces refert:”

[“Howling, roaring, groaning with a thousand noises, expressing his

torment in a dismal voice.” (Or:) “Wailing, complaining, groaning,

murmuring much avail lugubrious sounds.”--Verses of Attius, in his

Phaloctetes, quoted by Cicero, De Finib., ii. 29; Tusc. Quaes.,

ii. 14.]

I try myself in the depth of my suffering, and have always found that I

was in a capacity to speak, think, and give a rational answer as well as

at any other time, but not so firmly, being troubled and interrupted by

the pain. When I am looked upon by my visitors to be in the greatest

torment, and that they therefore forbear to trouble me, I often essay my

own strength, and myself set some discourse on foot, the most remote I

can contrive from my present condition. I can do anything upon a sudden

endeavour, but it must not continue long. Oh, what pity ‘tis I have not

the faculty of that dreamer in Cicero, who dreaming he was lying with a

wench, found he had discharged his stone in the sheets. My pains

strangely deaden my appetite that way. In the intervals from this

excessive torment, when my ureters only languish without any great dolor,

I presently feel myself in my wonted state, forasmuch as my soul takes no

other alarm but what is sensible and corporal, which I certainly owe to

the care I have had of preparing myself by meditation against such

accidents:

“Laborum,

Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinave surgit;

Omnia praecepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi.”

[“No new shape of suffering can arise new or unexpected; I have

anticipated all, and acted them over beforehand in my mind.”

--AEneid, vi. 103.]

I am, however, a little roughly handled for an apprentice, and with a

sudden and sharp alteration, being fallen in an instant from a very easy

and happy condition of life into the most uneasy and painful that can be

imagined. For besides that it is a disease very much to be feared in

itself, it begins with me after a more sharp and severe manner than it is

used to do with other men. My fits come so thick upon me that I am

scarcely ever at ease; yet I have hitherto kept my mind so upright that,

provided I can still continue it, I find myself in a much better

condition of life than a thousand others, who have no fewer nor other

disease but what they create to themselves for want of meditation.

There is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption,

as this, for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and

are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in the works of nature

some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which

our understanding cannot discover the means and causes; by this so honest

and conscientious declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also

believe us as to those that we say we do understand. We need not trouble

ourselves to seek out foreign miracles and difficulties; methinks,

amongst the things that we ordinarily see, there are such

incomprehensible wonders as surpass all difficulties of miracles. What a

wonderful thing it is that the drop of seed from which we are produced

should carry in itself the impression not only of the bodily form, but

even of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers! Where can that

drop of fluid matter contain that infinite number of forms? and how can

they carry on these resemblances with so precarious and irregular a

process that the son shall be like his great-grandfather, the nephew like

his uncle? In the family of Lepidus at Rome there were three, not

successively but by intervals, who were born with the same eye covered

with a cartilage. At Thebes there was a race that carried from their

mother’s womb the form of the head of a lance, and he who was not born so

was looked upon as illegitimate. And Aristotle says that in a certain

nation, where the women were in common, they assigned the children to

their fathers by their resemblance.

‘Tis to be believed that I derive this infirmity from my father, for he

died wonderfully tormented with a great stone in his bladder; he was

never sensible of his disease till the sixty-seventh year of his age; and

before that had never felt any menace or symptoms of it, either in his

reins, sides, or any other part, and had lived, till then, in a happy,

vigorous state of health, little subject to infirmities, and he continued

seven years after in this disease, dragging on a very painful end of

life. I was born about five-and-twenty years before his disease seized

him, and in the time of his most flourishing and healthful state of body,

his third child in order of birth: where could his propension to this

malady lie lurking all that while? And he being then so far from the

infirmity, how could that small part of his substance wherewith he made

me, carry away so great an impression for its share? and how so

concealed, that till five-and-forty years after, I did not begin to be

sensible of it? being the only one to this hour, amongst so many

brothers and sisters, and all by one mother, that was ever troubled with

it. He that can satisfy me in this point, I will believe him in as many

other miracles as he pleases; always provided that, as their manner is,

he do not give me a doctrine much more intricate and fantastic than the

thing itself for current pay.

Let the physicians a little excuse the liberty I take, for by this same

infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I have received a hatred and

contempt of their doctrine; the antipathy I have against their art is

hereditary. My father lived three-score and fourteen years, my

grandfather sixty-nine, my great-grandfather almost fourscore years,

without ever tasting any sort of physic; and, with them, whatever was not

ordinary diet, was instead of a drug. Physic is grounded upon experience

and examples: so is my opinion. And is not this an express and very

advantageous experience. I do not know that they can find me in all

their records three that were born, bred, and died under the same roof,

who have lived so long by their conduct. They must here of necessity

confess, that if reason be not, fortune at least is on my side, and with

physicians fortune goes a great deal further than reason. Let them not

take me now at a disadvantage; let them not threaten me in the subdued

condition wherein I now am; that were treachery. In truth, I have enough

the better of them by these domestic examples, that they should rest

satisfied. Human things are not usually so constant; it has been two

hundred years, save eighteen, that this trial has lasted, for the first

of them was born in the year 1402: ‘tis now, indeed, very good reason

that this experience should begin to fail us. Let them not, therefore,

reproach me with the infirmities under which I now suffer; is it not

enough that I for my part have lived seven-and-forty years in good

health? though it should be the end of my career; ‘tis of the longer

sort.

My ancestors had an aversion to physic by some occult and natural

instinct; for the very sight of drugs was loathsome to my father. The

Seigneur de Gaviac, my uncle by the father’s side, a churchman, and a

valetudinary from his birth, and yet who made that crazy life hold out to

sixty-seven years, being once fallen into a furious fever, it was ordered

by the physicians he should be plainly told that if he would not make use

of help (for so they call that which is very often an obstacle), he would

infallibly be a dead man. That good man, though terrified with this

dreadful sentence, yet replied, “I am then a dead man.” But God soon

after made the prognostic false. The last of the brothers--there were

four of them--and by many years the last, the Sieur de Bussaguet, was the

only one of the family who made use of medicine, by reason, I suppose, of

the concern he had with the other arts, for he was a councillor in the

court of Parliament, and it succeeded so ill with him, that being in

outward appearance of the strongest constitution, he yet died long before

any of the rest, save the Sieur de Saint Michel.

‘Tis possible I may have derived this natural antipathy to physic from

them; but had there been no other consideration in the case, I would have

endeavoured to have overcome it; for all these conditions that spring in

us without reason, are vicious; ‘tis a kind of disease that we should

wrestle with. It may be I had naturally this propension; but I have

supported and fortified it by arguments and reasons which have

established in me the opinion I am of. For I also hate the consideration

of refusing physic for the nauseous taste.

I should hardly be of that humour who hold health to be worth purchasing

by all the most painful cauteries and incisions that can be applied.

And, with Epicurus, I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided, if

greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted, that will

terminate in greater pleasures. Health is a precious thing, and the only

one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out, not only his time,

sweat, labour, and goods, but also his life itself to obtain it;

forasmuch as, without it, life is wearisome and injurious to us:

pleasure, wisdom, learning, and virtue, without it, wither away and

vanish; and to the most laboured and solid discourses that philosophy

would imprint in us to the contrary, we need no more but oppose the image

of Plato being struck with an epilepsy or apoplexy; and, in this

presupposition, to defy him to call the rich faculties of his soul to his

assistance. All means that conduce to health can neither be too painful

nor too dear to me. But I have some other appearances that make me

strangely suspect all this merchandise. I do not deny but that there may

be some art in it, that there are not amongst so many works of Nature,

things proper for the conservation of health: that is most certain: I

very well know there are some simples that moisten, and others that dry;

I experimentally know that radishes are windy, and senna-leaves purging;

and several other such experiences I have, as that mutton nourishes me,

and wine warms me: and Solon said “that eating was physic against the

malady hunger.” I do not disapprove the use we make of things the earth

produces, nor doubt, in the least, of the power and fertility of Nature,

and of its application to our necessities: I very well see that pikes and

swallows live by her laws; but I mistrust the inventions of our mind, our

knowledge and art, to countenance which, we have abandoned Nature and her

rules, and wherein we keep no bounds nor moderation. As we call the

piling up of the first laws that fall into our hands justice, and their

practice and dispensation very often foolish and very unjust; and as

those who scoff at and accuse it, do not, nevertheless, blame that noble

virtue itself, but only condemn the abuse and profanation of that sacred

title; so in physic I very much honour that glorious name, its

propositions, its promises, so useful for the service of mankind; but the

ordinances it foists upon us, betwixt ourselves, I neither honour nor

esteem.

In the first place, experience makes me dread it; for amongst all my

acquaintance, I see no people so soon sick, and so long before they are

well, as those who take much physic; their very health is altered and

corrupted by their frequent prescriptions. Physicians are not content to

deal only with the sick, but they will moreover corrupt health itself,

for fear men should at any time escape their authority. Do they not,

from a continual and perfect health, draw the argument of some great

sickness to ensue? I have been sick often enough, and have always found

my sicknesses easy enough to be supported (though I have made trial of

almost all sorts), and as short as those of any other, without their

help, or without swallowing their ill-tasting doses. The health I have

is full and free, without other rule or discipline than my own custom and

pleasure. Every place serves me well enough to stay in, for I need no

other conveniences, when I am sick, than what I must have when I am well.

I never disturb myself that I have no physician, no apothecary, nor any

other assistance, which I see most other sick men more afflicted at than

they are with their disease. What! Do the doctors themselves show us

more felicity and duration in their own lives, that may manifest to us

some apparent effect of their skill?

There is not a nation in the world that has not been many ages without

physic; and these the first ages, that is to say, the best and most

happy; and the tenth part of the world knows nothing of it yet; many

nations are ignorant of it to this day, where men live more healthful and

longer than we do here, and even amongst us the common people live well

enough without it. The Romans were six hundred years before they

received it; and after having made trial of it, banished it from the city

at the instance of Cato the Censor, who made it appear how easy it was to

live without it, having himself lived fourscore and five years, and kept

his wife alive to an extreme old age, not without physic, but without a

physician: for everything that we find to be healthful to life may be

called physic. He kept his family in health, as Plutarch says if I

mistake not, with hare’s milk; as Pliny reports, that the Arcadians

cured all manner of diseases with that of a cow; and Herodotus says, the

Lybians generally enjoy rare health, by a custom they have, after their

children are arrived to four years of age, to burn and cauterise the

veins of their head and temples, by which means they cut off all

defluxions of rheum for their whole lives. And the country people of our

province make use of nothing, in all sorts of distempers, but the

strongest wine they can get, mixed with a great deal of saffron and

spice, and always with the same success.