Let customary appetites of it, which can only give a man liberty and happiness in this world. this suffice at present to be spoken of those great triumviri of the world; the covetous man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus; the ambitious, who is a brave one, like Octavius; and the voluptuous, who is a loose and debauched one, like Mark Antony: Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibíque imperiosus 5: Not Oenomaus 6, who commits himself wholly to a charioteer, that may break his neck; but the man, This, I confess, is a freeman: but it may be said, that many persons are so shackled by their fortune, that they are hindered from enjoyment of that manumission which they have obtained from virtue. I do both understand, and in part fee!, the weight of this objection; all I can answer to it is, that we must get as much liberty as we can, we must use our utmost endeavours, and, when all that is done, be contented with the length of that line which is allowed us. If you ask me, in what condition of life I think the most allowed; I should pitch upon that sort of people, whom King James was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the men placed in the country by their fortune above an high constable, and yet beneath the trouble of a justice of peace; in a moderate plenty, without any just argument for the desire of increasing it by the care of many relations; and with so much knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that is, of the study of God's laws, and of his creatures) as may afford him matter enough never to be idle, though without business; and never to be melancholy, though without sin or vanity. I shall conclude this tedious discourse with a prayer of mine in a copy of Latin verses, of which I remember no other part; and (pour faire bonne bouche) with some other verses upon the same subject: Magne Deus, quod ad has vitæ brevis attinet horas, Da mihi, da panem libertatemque, nec ultrà For the few hours of life allotted me, 5 Hor. 2 Sat. vii. 83. • Virg. Georg. ii. 7. I'll beg no more: if more thou'rt please to give, MARTIAL, Lib. I. Ep. lvi. Vota tui breviter, &c. WELL then, sir, you shall know how far extend The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend. He does not palaces nor manors crave, Would be no lord, but less a lord would have; The ground he holds, if he his own can call, He quarrels not with Heaven because 'tis small: Let gay and toilsome greatness others please, He loves of homely littleness the ease. Can any man in gilded rooms attend, And his dear hours in humble visits spend, When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may With various healthful pleasures fill the day? If there be nian (ye gods !) I ought to hate, Dependance and attendance be his fate: Still let him busy be, and in a crowd, And very much a slave, and very proud : Thus he perhaps powerful and rich may grow; No matter, O ye gods! that I'll allow: But let him peace and freedom never see; Let him not love this life, who loves not me! MARTIAL, Lib. II. Ep. liii. Vis fieri liber? &c. WOULD you be free? 'Tis your chief wish you say; Come on, I'll show thee, friend, the certain way; MARTIAL, Lib. II. Ep. Ixviii. Quod te nomine? &c. THAT I do you with humble bows no more, And danger of my naked head, adore; That I, who "Lord and master," cry'd erewhile, Salute you, in a new and different style, By your own name, a scandal to you now; Think not that I forget myself or you : By loss of all things, by all others sought, This freedom, and the freeman's hat, is bought. A lord and master no man wants, but he Who o'er himself has no authority; Who does for honours and for riches strive, And follies, without which lords cannot live. If thou from fortune dost no servant crave, Believe it, thou no master need'st to have. ODE UPON LIBERTY. FREEDOM with Virtue takes her seat; Her proper place, her only scene, Is in the golden mean, She lives not with the poor nor with the great. And they 're in Fortune's bridewell whipt These are by various tyrants captive led. Rides, reins, and spurs, them like th' unruly horse; And servile Avarice yokes them now, And sometimes Lust, like the misguided light, From these insulting passions free, Yet we ev'n those, too, fetter'd see By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency; And, wheresoe'er they stay, and wheresoe'er they go, Impertinences round them flow: These are the small uneasy things Which about greatness still are found, Like gnats, which too much heat of summer brings; But cares do swarm there, too, and those have The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it. Tis morning; well; I fain would yet sleep on; You cannot now; you must be gone To court, or to the noisy hall: Besides, the rooms without are crowded all; The stream of business does begin, And a spring-tide of clients is come in. Ah cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep! Will they not suffer him to sleep? Make an escape; out at the postern flee, And get some blessed hours of liberty: With a few friends, and a few dishes, dine, And much of mirth and moderate wine. To thy bent mind some relaxation give, And steal one day out of thy life to live. Oh happy man (he cries) to whom kind Heaven Has such a freedom always given ! Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee In all the free born nations of the air, When, and wherever he thought good, And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, Who keep your primitive powers and rights so Though men and angels fell. Of all material lives the highest place To you is justly given; [well, And ways and walks the nearest Heaven. Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think fit To boast, that we look up to it. Ev'n to the universal tyrant, Love, You homage pay but once a year: He's no small prince who every day Thus to himself can say ; Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk, My man and I will presently go ride To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish mount, As if thy last thou wert to make, Business must be dispatch'd, ere thou canst part, A hundred horse and men to wait on thee, A journey, too, might go. Where honour, or where conscience, does not bind, Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand Before it falls into his hand : The bondman of the cloister so, Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. (In which he only hits the white Who joins true profit with the best delight) The more heroic strain let others take, Mine the Pindaric way I'll make; [free, A thousand liberties it shall dispense, Or to the sweetness of the sound, or greatness of the sense; Nor shall it never from one subject start, Odi, & amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris, I hate, and yet I love thee too; And feel with torment that 'tis so. It is a deplorable condition, this, and drives a to avoid himself. man sometimes to pitiful shifts, in seeking how NUNQUAM minus solus, quam cum solus, is now become a very vulgar saying. Every man, and almost every boy, for these seventeen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a most eloquent and witty person, as well as the most wise, most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by solitude than by company; and, to show that he spoke not this loosely or out of vaThe truth of the matter is, that neither he nity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost who is a fop in the world, is a fit man to be alone; the whole world, he retired himself from it by a though he have never so much understanding; nor he who has set his heart much upon the world, voluntary exile, and at a private house, in the middle of a wood, near Linternum', passed the but upon a very few persons. They must have so that solitude can be well fitted, and sit right, remainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity This house Seneca went to see so long after with of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity; if great veneration; and, among other things, de- the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, scribes his baths to have been of so mean a struca man had better be in a fair, than in a wood ture, that now, says he, the basest of the peo-alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us ple would despise them, and cry out, "Poor Scipio understood not how to live." What an authority is here for the credit of retreat! and happy bad it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest prosperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said by Monsieur de Montagne, "That ambition itself might teach us to love selitude; there is nothing does so much hate to have companions." It is true, it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have company on either side; but it delights above all things in a train behind, aye, and ushers too before it. But the greatest part of men are so far from the opinion of that noble Roman, that if they chance at any time to be without company, they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own perhaps, and pick our pockets, in the midst of and biud, or murder us, when they catch us company; but, like robbers, they use to strip alone. This is but to retreat from men, and fall into the hands of devils. It is like the punish sowed into a bag, with an ape, a dog, and a ment of parricides among the Romans, to be serpent. The first work therefore that a man must do, is, the very eradication of all lusts; for how is it to make himself capable of the good of solitude, possible for a man to enjoy himself, while his af fections are tied to things without himself? In the second place, he must learn the heart and get the habit of thinking; for this too, no less than wellspeaking, depends upon much practice; and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the solitude of a god from a wild beast. Now because the soul of man is not by its own nature or obserto steer withal. It is very fantastical and contra-vation furnished with sufficient materials to work dictory in human nature, that men should love themselves above all the rest of the world, and yet never endure to be with themselves. When they are in love with a mistress, all other persons are importunate and burthensome to them. Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens, they would live and die with her alone. Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere sylvis, Seneca Epist. lxxxvi. upon, it it is necessary for it to have continual recourse to learning and books for fresh supplies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, and be ready to starve, without them; but if once we stead of being wearied with the length of any day, be thoroughly engaged in the love of letters, inwe shall only complain of the shortness of our whole life. 4 Tibull. xiii. 9. O vita, stulto longa, sapienti brevis 4! O life, long to the fool, short to the wise! The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private if the one have little leisure to be a'one, the other has less leisure to be in company; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature, under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, "That a man does not know how to pass his time." It would have been but ill-spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred sixty-ninth year of his life; so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this, you will say, is work only for the learned; others are not capable either of the employments or divertisements that arrive from letters. I know they are not; and therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally illiterate. But, if any man be so unlearned, as to want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently occur in almost all conditions (except the very meanest of the people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for life), it is truly a great shame both to his parents and himself; for a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time: either music, or painting, or designing, or chymistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly; and if he happen to set his affections upon poetry (which I do not advise him too immoderately), that will over-do it; no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or business, which would abstract him from his beloved. O qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, & ingeuti ramorum protegat umbrâs? Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good! Hail, the poor Muses' richest manor-seat ! Here Nature does a house for me erect, Nature the wisest architect, Who those fond artists does despise That can the fair and living trees neglect ; Yet the dead timber prize. Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, Hear the soft winds, above me flying, 4 "O vita, misero longa, felici brevis !" Virg. Georg. ii, 489. VOL VII. With all their wanton boughs dispute, And the more tuneful birds to both replying, Nor be myself, too, mute, A silver stream shall roll his waters near, Ah wretched and too solitary he, Who loves not his own company; He'll feel the weight of 't many a day, Unless he call in sin or vanity To help to bear't away. Oh Solitude, first state of human-kind ! As soon as two alas! together join'd, Tho' God himself, through countless ages, thee Sprang from the trunk of one. Thou (tho' men think thine an unactive part) Dost, break and time th' unruly heart, Which else would know no settled pace, Making it move, well-manag'd by thy art, With swiftness and with grace. Thou the faint beams of reason's scatter'd light And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks, I set But thy estate I pity. Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, III. OF OBSCURITY. NAM neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis; Nec vixit malè, qui natus moriensque fefellit 6. God made not pleasures only for the rich; This seems a strange sentence, thus literally translated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the men of business (for who else can deceive the Hor. 1 Ep. xvii. 9. But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as Quintilian says 9, vitam fallere, to draw on still, and amuse, and de'ceive, our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, and fall into that pit which | nature hath prepared for it. The meaning of all this is no more than that most vulgar saying, Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, He has lived well, who has lain well hidden; which, if it be a truth, the world (I will swear) is sufficiently deceived for my part, I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life is, in incognito. What a brave privilege is it, to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envyed, from receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime, for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know any body. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage. Venus herself, A vail of thicken'd air around them cast, The common story of Demosthenes' confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say, as he passed, "This is that Demosthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any); but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good-fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so fainous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known, or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, "This is that Bucephalus," or, "This is that Incitatus," when they were led prancing through the streets, as, "This is that Alexander," or, "This is that Domitian ;" and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship, than he the empire. I love and commend a true good-fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and, like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man, whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniencies of old-age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit): this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well, SENECA, EX THYESTE, ACT II. CHOR, Stet quicumque volet potens, &c. Upon the slippery tops of human state, The gilded pinnacles of fate, |