commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market, and cheapen what I please, without being wondered at; and take my horfe and ride as far as Tarentum, without being miffed." It is an unpleasant conftraint to be always under the fight and observation, and cenfure, of others; as there may be vanity in it, so methinks there should be vexation, too, of spirit: and I wonder how princes can endure to have two or three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing feems greater and more lordly than the multitude of domestic fervants; but even this too, if weighed feriously, is a piece of fervitude; unless you will be a fervant to them (as many men are), the trouble and care of yours in the government of them all is much more than that of every one of them in their obfervance of you. I take the profeffion of a school-master to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a commonwealth; yet certainly all his fafces and tyrannical authority over so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs. I do but flightly touch upon all these particulars of the flavery of greatness: I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger, hatred, jealoufy, fear, envy, grief, and all the et cætera of their paffions, which are the secret, but constant, tyrants and tortures of their life, I omit here, because, though they be fymptoms most frequent and violent in this disease, yet yet they are common too in some degree to the epidemical disease of life itself. But the ambitious man, though he be so many ways a flave (o toties fervus !), yet he bears it bravely and heroically; he ftruts and looks big upon the stage; he thinks himself a real prince in his masking-habit, and deceives too all the foolish part of his fpectators: he is a slave in faturnalibus. The covetous man is a downright servant, a draught-horse without bells or feathers; ad metalla damnatus, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest condition of fervitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he knows not whom: "He heapeth up riches, and "knows not who fhall enjoy them *;" it is only fure, that he himself neither fhall nor can enjoy them. He is an indigent, needy flave; he will hardly allow himfelf cloaths and board-wages : Unciatim vix de demenfo fuo, Suum defraudans genium, comparfit mifer † ; He defrauds not only other men, but his own genius.; he cheats himself for money. But the fervile and miferable condition of this wretch is fo apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man's fight, as well as judgment. It seems a more difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man too is but a fervant: what can be more the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gen*Pf. xxxix. 6. + Phorm. A& I. Sc. i.. ver. 4.3. 1 VOL. II. tleman, tleman, than to follow nothing but his own pleasures? Why, I will tell you who is that true freeman, and that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows all his pleasures (the very name of follower is fervile); but he who rationally guides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the condu& and enjoyment of them. If I want fkill or force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet, in the truth of the matter, I am at that time rather his man, than he my horfe. The voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the lustful and luxurious, who are both fervants of the belly; the other, whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were nanà. Ingiay evil wild beafts; these are yacéges, ágyai, flaw bellies, as our tranflation renders it, but the word ågyaì (which is a fantastical word, with two directly opposite significations) will bear as well the translation of quick or diligent bellies; and both interpretations may be applied to these men. Metrodorus faid," that he had learnt σε ἀληθῶς γαςρὶ χαρίζεσθαι, to give his belly juft thanks "for all his pleafures." This, by the calumniators of Epicurus's philofophy, was objected as one of the most scandalous of all their fayings; which, according to my charitable understanding, may admit a very virtuous fenfe, which is, that he thanked his own belly for that moderation, in the cuftomary appetites of it, which can only give a man liberty and happiness in this world. Let this fuffice 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; Quifnam igitur liber? Sapiens, fibíque imperiofus *: Not Oenomaus †, who commits himself wholly to a charioteer, that may break his neck; but the man, Who governs his own course with steady hand 5 } This, I confefs, is a freeman: but it may be faid, that many persons are so shackled by their fortune, that they are hindered from enjoyment of that manumiffion which they have obtained from virtue. I do both understand, and in part feel, the weight of this objection : all I can answer to it is, that we mult 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 fhould pitch upon that fort of people, whom King *Hor, 2 Sat, vii, 83. T 2 Virg. Georg. iii. 7. James 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 defire of increasing it by the care of many relations; and with so much knowledge and love of piety and philofophy (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 fin or vanity. I fhall conclude this tedious difcourfe with a prayer of mine in a copy of Latin verses, of which I remember no other part; and, (pour faire bonne bouche) with fome other verses upon the fame subject : “ Magne Deus, quod ad has vitæ brevis attinet horas, For the few hours of life allotted me, If beyond this no more be freely fent, MAR |