EPISTLE XV.

The danger of flatlery: and in what cases a man may be allowed to commend himself.

DEMETRIUS was wont to say, "That knavery was the ready way to riches;" and that the casting off of virtue was the first step to thriving in the world. Study but the art of flattery (which is nowa-days so acceptable, that a moderate commendation passes for a libel), study that art (I say), and you shall do your business without any risk upon the seas, or any hazards of merchandizing, husbandry, or suits at law. There is not one man of a million that is proof against an artificial flattery; but something or other will stick, if we do but give him the hearing. Nay, we like him well enough, though we shake him off, and the quarrel is easily reconciled. We seem to oppose him, but we do not shut the door against him; or if we do, it is but what a mistress will do sometimes upon her servant, "She would be well enough content to be hindered; and take it much better yet to have it broken open." Besides that, a man lies commonly most open where he is attacked. How shamefully are great men fawned upon by their slaves, and inured to fulsome praises! when the only business of those that call themselves friends is to try who can most dexterously deceive his master. For want of knowing their own strength, they believe themselves as great as their parasites represented them: and venture upon broils and wars to their irreparable destruction. They break alliances, and transport themselves into passions, which, for want of better counsels, hurry them on to blood and confusion. They pursue every wild imagination as a certainty, and think it greater disgrace to be bent, than to be broken. They set up their rest upon the perpetuity of a tottering fortune, until they come at last to see the ruin of themselves upon their possessions; and too late to understand that their misfortunes and their flatteries were of the same date. There is a sparing and a crafty

flattery, that looks like plain dealing; but all flatteries are words of course, and he that receives them will give them. Nay, let it be ever so shameless, a man takes all to himself, though his very conscience gives him the lie. Cruelty shall be translated mercy; extortion and oppression shall be called liberality; lust and gluttony, to the highest degree in the world, shall be magnified for temperance. Now, what hope is there of his changing for the better that values himself for the best of men already? The stroke of an arrow convinced Alexander that he was not the son of Jupiter, but a mortal man. And thus, upon the experiment of human frailty, should every man say to himself, Am I not sad sometimes, and tortured between hope and fear? Do I not hanker after vain pleasures? He that is not yet satisfied is not so good as he should be. The words of flatterers and parasites seldom die in the hearing; and when they have gained admittance, they grow more and more upon you; and shortly they will tell you that virtue, philosophy, and justice, are but empty sounds; let every man live while he may, and make the best of the present; and not govern himself at a rate as if he were to keep a dairy for his father. What madness is it to enrich a man's heir and starve himself; and to turn a friend into an enemy! for his joy will be proportioned to what you leave him. Never trouble yourself for these superfluous censors of other men's lives and enemies of their own; these pedagogues of mankind are not worth your These are the people that draw us from our parents and country, our friends, and other necessary duties.

care.

I would neither be deceived myself nor deceive others; but if a man cannot live without it, let him commend himself, and say thus : "I have applied myself to liberal studies, though both the poverty of my condition and my own reason might rather have put me upon the making of my fortune. I have given proof that all minds are capable of goodness; and have illustrated the obscurity of my family, by the eminency of my virtue. I have preserved my fate in all extremities, and I have ventured my life for it. I have never spoken one word contrary to my conscience, and I have been more solicitous

fer my friend than for myself; I never made any base submission to any man; and I have never done any thing unworthy of a resolute and of an honest man. My mind is raised so much above all dangers, that I have mastered all hazards; and I bless myself in the resolution which gave me that experiment of my virtue; for it was not fit, methought, that so great glory should come cheap. Nay, I did not so much as deliberate whether good faith should suffer for me or I for it. I stood my ground, without laying violent hands upon myself, to escape the rage of the powerful; though under Caligula, I saw cruelties to such a degree, that to be killed outright was accounted a mercy. And yet I persisted in my honesty, to show that I was ready to do more than die for it. My mind was never corrupted with gifts; and when the humor of avarice was at the height, I never laid my hand upon any unlawful gain. I have been temperate in my diet; modest in my discourse; courteous and affable to my inferiors; and have even paid a respect and reverence to my betters." After all, what I have said is either true or false : if true, I have commended myself before a great witness, and my own conscience; if false, I am ridiculous without any witness at all. Let every man retire into himself; for the old, the young, men, women, and children, they are all bad. Not every one only, or a few, but there is a general conspiracy in evil. We should therefore fly the world, withdraw into ourselves, and in some sort avoid even ourselves too.

EPISTLE XVI.

A general dissolution of manners; with

magistrates.

a censure of corrupt

THE corruption of the present times is the general complaint of all times; it ever has been so, and it ever will be so not consider

ing that the unrighteousuess of the world is always the same as to the degree of it, though it may change places, perhaps, and vary a little in the matter. One while licentiousness is in fashion, another while gluttony; to-day excess in apparel, and more care of the body than of the mind; to-morrow comes up the humor of scoffing; and after that, perchance, a vein of drinking; when he shall be accounted the bravest man that makes himself the veriest beast. This prostitute looseness of manners makes way for sedition and cruelty. Under Tiberius, the plague of your dilators or informers, was worse than any civil war. It was an age wherein the words of men in their cups, the most innocent railleries, and ingenuous freedom of conversation were made capital: when it was dangerous to be honest, and only profitable to be vicious; and not only ill things, but vice itself, was both commended and preferred: for all insolences, when they come to be exemplary, they pretend to be lawful. Authority in sin is an incentive to it: and it is at least an excuse, if not a warrant, to transgress after a great example. Beside that, we are prone enough to do amiss even of ourselves, without either a leader or a companion. But it is a malevolent sort of comfort, that which men take in the number of the unrighteous.

The worst of all is, that whereas in other cases, the people are ashamed of their errors, in that of life they are delighted with them, and so become incurable. The pilot takes no pleasure in running upon a rock; nor the physician in the death of his patient; nor the advocate in the loss of his client's cause: but on the other side, the criminal rejoices in his uncleanness, in his ambition, and in his theft; and never troubles himself for the fault, but for the miscarriage. He makes infamy the reward of lewdness, and values himself upon his excellency in ill-doing. The question is, who shall be most unrighteous; we have every day worse appetites and less shame. Sobriety and conscience are become foolish and scandalous things; and it is half the relish of our lusts that they are committed in the face of the sun. Innocency is not only rare, but lost; and mankind is entered into a sort of confederacy against virtue: to say nothing

of intestine wars, fathers and sons in league against one another, poisoned fountains, troops in search of the banished and proscribed, prisons crammed with worthy men, cities demolished, rape and adultery authorized, public perjuries and frauds, a violation of common faith, and all the bonds of human society canceled. Adultery is the ready way to wedlock, and marriage to a single life again; for parting is one condition of it: for they divorce to marry, and they marry to be divorced. That which they often talk and hear of, they easily do. What shame can there be of incontinence, when modesty is become a reproach; and when it is the mode of every wife to provide herself a gallant or two beside her husband? It is an idle thing to think of ever converting those people that find both advantage and reputation in their unrighteousness.

Would any man ever have imagined that Clodius should have come off by bribery for debauching the wife of Cæsar, and profaning the public vows for the safety of the people? But the judges were corrupted; and not only with money, but with the bodies of young men and women: so that his absolution was worse than his crime; the bribe was adultery as well as the offence; and he had no way to be safe till he had made the judges like himself. "Name the woman you have a mind to," says he, "and you shall have her: and when you have committed the sin, condemn it if you dare. Appoint the time and the place, and she shall be ready for you." Nay, the practice was so gross that the bench desired a guard of the senate to secure them from the people. Before the sentence was given he was an adulterer, in the management of the cause he was a pander, and his way of escaping punishment was worse than the offence that deserved it. A lust that spared not the altar, and perverted justice upon the very seat of judgment. The question was, "Whether an adulterer should escape unpunished?" and the resolution was, That "without being an adulterer he could not be secure." Nor is it likely that their conversation was one jot honester than their sentence; these things have been done, and will be done. Discipline and fear may restrain the license of the people; but it is not to be thought that they will