SINCE we cannot attain to greatness, says the Sieur de Montaigne, let us
have our revenge by railing at it; this he spoke but in jest. I believe
he desired it no more than I do, and had less reason, for he enjoyed so
plentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as
allowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from
the incommodities. If I were but in his condition, I should think it
hard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be sequestered
from it and made one of the principal officers of state. But the reader
may think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was,
nor ever shall be, put to the trial; I can therefore only make my
protestation.
If ever I more riches did desire
Than cleanliness and quiet do require;
If e’er ambition did my fancy cheat,
With any wish so mean as to be great,
Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove
The humble blessings of that life I love.
I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as
a poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for
being so. _Dii bene fecerunt inopis me_, _quodque pusilli finxerunt
animi_. I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little
convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very
little feast; and if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great
passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it) it would be, I think,
with prettiness rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish
that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer
used to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the
stateliness and largeness of her person, but, as Lucretius says,
“_Parvula_, _pumilio_, Χαρίτων μία, _tota merum sal_.”
Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of
Senecio’s mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder
describes to this effect. Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused
wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences,
till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather
disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants
but huge massy fellows, no plate or household stuff but thrice as big as
the fashion; you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his
extravagancy came at last into such a madness that he would not put on a
pair of shoes each of which was not big enough for both his feet; he
would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums
and pound-pears. He kept a concubine that was a very giantess, and made
her walk, too, always in a chiopins, till at last he got the surname of
Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his
cognomentum. When he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who
also opposed Xerxes’ army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched
out his arms and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and
cried out in a very loud voice, “I rejoice, I rejoice!” We wondered, I
remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. “Xerxes,”
says he, “is all mine own. He who took away the sight of the sea with
the canvas veils of so many ships . . . ” and then he goes on so, as I
know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the
edition, or the orator’s own burly way of nonsense.
This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we
stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not, in some
things, and to some degree, grandios. Is anything more common than to
see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in
without one to lead them? and a gown as long again as their body, so that
they cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up? I
may safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a
train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious.
What is all this but spice of _grandio_? How tedious would this be if we
were always bound to it? I do believe there is no king who would not
rather be deposed than endure every day of his reign all the ceremonies
of his coronation. The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from
these majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparagement to
them), as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements and
meanest recreations of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of the
most powerful and fortunate princes of the world of late, could find out
no delight so satisfactory as the keeping of little singing birds, and
hearing of them and whistling to them. What did the emperors of the
whole world? If ever any men had the free and full enjoyment of all
human greatness (nay, that would not suffice, for they would be gods too)
they certainly possessed it; and yet one of them, who styled himself
“Lord and God of the Earth,” could not tell how to pass his whole day
pleasantly, without spending constant two or three hours in catching of
flies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been
Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor
met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime
more agreeable than to run about the streets all night in a disguise, and
abuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat
them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This was one of his imperial
nocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a
fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage; he was prouder
of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it
then) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were of their
triumphs over nations. He did not at his death complain that so mighty
an emperor, and the last of all the Cæsarian race of deities, should be
brought to so shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, “Alas!
what pity it is that so excellent a musician should perish in this
manner!” His uncle Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; that
was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the madnesses of
Caligula’s delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of Tiberius.
Would one think that Augustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of
mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of nature, should
be so hard put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to be found
playing at nuts and bounding-stones with little Syrian and Moorish boys,
whose company he took delight in, for their prating and their wantonness?
Was it for this, that Rome’s best blood he spilt,
With so much falsehood, so much guilt?
Was it for this that his ambition strove
To equal Cæsar first, and after Jove?
Greatness is barren sure of solid joys;
Her merchandise, I fear, is all in toys;
She could not else sure so uncivil be,
To treat his universal majesty,
His new created Deity,
With nuts and bounding-stones and boys.
But we must excuse her for this meagre entertainment; she has not really
wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be
contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with the same cold meats
served over and over again, even till they become nauseous. When you
have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does
there remain which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year? not so
many servants or horses, but a few good ones, which will do all the
business as well; not so many choice dishes at every meal; but at several
meals all of them, which makes them both the more healthy and dine more
pleasant; not so rich garments nor so frequent changes, but as warm and
as comely, and so frequent change, too, as is every jot as good for the
master, though not for the tailor or valet-de-chambre; not such a stately
palace, nor gilt rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a
convenient brick house, with decent wainscot and pretty forest-work
hangings. Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with
that which I love most in both conditions), not whole woods cut in walks,
nor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens, but herb and flower and
fruit gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear
and wholesome as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph or the
urn of a river-god. If for all this you like better the substance of
that former estate of life, do but consider the inseparable accidents of
both: servitude, disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, inherent in
the one; in the other, liberty, tranquillity, security, and innocence:
and when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth
which appeared to you before but a ridiculous paradox, that a low fortune
is better guarded and attended than a high one. If indeed, we look only
upon the flourishing head of the tree, it appears a most beautiful
object.
—_Sed quantum vertice ad auras_
_Ætherias_, _tantum radice ad Tartara tendit_.
As far up towards heaven the branches grow,
So far the root sinks down to hell below.
Another horrible disgrace to greatness is, that it is for the most part
in pitiful want and distress. What a wonderful thing is this, unless it
degenerate into avarice, and so cease to be greatness. It falls
perpetually into such necessities as drive it into all the meanest and
most sordid ways of borrowing, cozenage, and robbery, _Mancipiis
locopules_, _eget aris Cappadocum Rex_. This is the case of almost all
great men, as well as of the poor King of Cappadocia. They abound with
slaves, but are indigent of money. The ancient Roman emperors, who had
the riches of the whole world for their revenue, had wherewithal to live,
one would have thought, pretty well at ease, and to have been exempt from
the pressures of extreme poverty. But yet with most of them it was much
otherwise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable penury, that
they were forced to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants,
to cheat with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their
provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior
and subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must
be cheated of a third part of their estates, two other thirds they must
expend in vanity, so that they remain debtors for all the necessary
provisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts but out of the
succours and supplies of rapine; “as riches increase,” says Solomon, “so
do the mouths that devour it.” The master mouth has no more than before;
the owner, methinks, is like Genus in the fable, who is perpetually
winding a rope of hay and an ass at the end perpetually eating it. Out
of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, which is, that no
greatness can be satisfied or contented with itself: still, if it could
mount up a little higher, it would be happy; if it could but gain that
point, it would obtain all its desires; but yet at last, when it is got
up to the very top of the peak of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger
of breaking its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascending
upwards into the seat of tranquillity above the moon. The first
ambitious men in the world, the old giants, are said to have made an
heroical attempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and they cast
Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, two or three mountains more they
thought would have done their business, but the thunder spoiled all the
work when they were come up to the third storey;
And what a noble plot was crossed,
And what a brave design was lost.
A famous person of their offspring, the late giant of our nation, when,
from the condition of a very inconsiderable captain, he had made himself
lieutenant-general of an army of little Titans, which was his first
mountain; and afterwards general, which was his second; and after that
absolute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the third, and almost
touched the heaven which he affected; is believed to have died with grief
and discontent because he could not attain to the honest name of a king,
and the old formality of a crown, though he had before exceeded the power
by a wicked usurpation. If he could have compassed that, he would
perhaps have wanted something else that is necessary to felicity, and
pined away for the want of the title of an emperor or a god. The reason
of this is, that greatness has no reality in nature, but is a creature of
the fancy—a notion that consists only in relation and comparison. It is
indeed an idol; but St. Paul teaches us that an idol is nothing in the
world. There is in truth no rising or meridian of the sun, but only in
respect to several places: there is no right or left, no upper hand in
nature; everything is little and everything is great according as it is
diversely compared. There may be perhaps some villages in Scotland or
Ireland where I might be a great man; and in that case I should be like
Cæsar—you would wonder how Cæsar and I should be like one another in
anything—and choose rather to be the first man of the village than second
at Rome. Our Country is called Great Britain, in regard only of a lesser
of the same name; it would be but a ridiculous epithet for it when we
consider it together with the kingdom of China. That, too, is but a
pitiful rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth besides; and this
whole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but one
point or atom in relation to those numberless worlds that are scattered
up and down in the infinite space of the sky which we behold. The other
many inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of dispersedly in several
chapters, and shall end this with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied
but rudely imitated.