ever be good of their own accord. But let us not yet speak of luxury and dissolution as the vices of the age, which in truth are only the vices of the men. The practices of our times are moderate compared with those, when the delinquent pleaded not guilty to the bench, and the bench confessed itself guilty to the delinquent; and when one adultery was excused by another. In those days it passed for great goodness not to be very good. He that gave most carried the cause; and it is but according to the laws of nations for him that buys to sell. And it is to be noted, that a man may be as covetous of getting what he intends to squander away as if he were to hoard it up. The contempt of poverty in others, and the fear of it in ourselves, unmerciful oppressions, and mercenary magistrates, are the common grievances of a licentious government. The baths and the theaters are crowded, when the temples and the schools are empty; for men mind their pleasures more than their manners. All vices gain upon us by the promise of reward; avarice promises money, luxury sensual satisfaction, ambition promises preferment and power. And it is no excuse to say that a man is not very covetous; a little ambitious, choleric, inconstant, lustful, and the like. He had better have one great vice than a spice of all little ones. We say commonly, that a fool has all sorts of vices in him; that is to say, free from none; but they do not all appear; and he is more prone to one than to another. One is given to avarice, another to luxury, a third to wantonness; but we are not yet to ask the Stoics if Achilles be a coward, Aristides unjust, Fabius rash, Mucius a traitor, Camillus a deserter. We do not say, that all vices are in all men, as some are in some particulars.

he is

EPISTLE XVII..

The original of all men is the same; and virtue is the only nobility. There is a tenderness due to servants.

It is not well done to be still murmuring against Nature and Fortune, as if it were their unkindness that makes you inconsiderable, when it is only by your own weakness that you make yourself so: for it is virtue, not pedigree, that renders a man either valuable or happy. Philosophy does not either reject or choose any man for his quality. Socrates was no patrician, Cleanthes but an under-gardener; neither did Plato dignify philosophy by his birth, but by his goodness. All these worthy men are our progenitors, if we will but do ourselves the honor to become their disciples. The original of all mankind was the same: and it is only a clear conscience that makes any man noble: for that derives even from justice itself. It is the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves. But Fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long story of revolutions. It is most certain that our beginning had nothing before it and our ancestors were some of them splendid, others sordid, as it happened. We have lost the memorials of our extraction; and, in truth, it matters not whence we came, but whither we go. Nor is it any more to our honor, the glory of our predecessors, than it is to their shame, the unrighteousness of their posterity. We are all of us composed of the same elements; why should we then value ourselves upon our nobility of blood, as if we were not all of us equal, if we could but recover our evidence? carry it no farther, the herald provides us some place of an illustrious original; and there is the rise of arms and families. For a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.

But when we can hero to supply the

It pleases me exceedingly to understand, by all that come out of your quarters, that you demean yourself humanely and tenderly towards your servants. It is the part of a wise and a good man, to deal with his inferior as he would have his superior deal with him; for servants are not only men, but a kind of humble friends; and Fortune has no more power over them, than over their masters; and he that duly considers how many servants have come to be masters, and how many masters to be servants, will lay no great stress of argument either upon the one or upon the other. Some use their servants worse than beasts, in slavish attendances betwen their drink and their lusts: some are brought up only to carve, others to season; and all to serve the turns of pomp and luxury. Is it not a barbarous custom to make it almost capital for a servant only to cough, sneeze, sigh, or but wag his lips while he is in waiting: and to keep him the whole night mute and fasting? Yet so it comes to pass, that they that dare not speak before their masters, will not forbear talking of them; and those, on the other side, that were allowed a modest freedom of speech in their master's entertainments, were most obstinately silent upon the torture, rather than they would betray them. But we live as if a servant were not made of the same materials with his master, or to breathe the same air, or to live and die under the same conditions. It is worthy of observation, that the most imperious masters over their own servants, are at the same time the most abject slaves to the servants of other masters. I will not distinguish a servant by his office, but by his manners. The one is the work of Fortune, the other of Virtue. But we look only to his quality, and not to his merit. Why should not a brave action rather dignify the condition of a servant, than the condition of a servant lessen a brave action? I would not value a man for his clothes or degree, any more than I would do a horse for his trappings. What if he be a servant? Show me any man that is not so, to his lusts, his avarice, his ambition, his palate, to his queen; nay, to other men's servants; and we are all of us servants to fear. Insolent we are many of us at home; servile and despised abroad; and none are

more liable to be trampled upon than those that have gotten a habit of giving affronts by suffering them. What matters it how many masters we have when it is but one slavery? and whosoever contemns that is perfectly free, let his masters be ever so many. That man is only free, not whom Fortune has a little power over, but over whom she has none at all: which state of liberty is an inestimable good, when we desire nothing that is superfluous or vicious. They are asses that are made for burden, and not the nobler sort of horses. In the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey, the question was not, who should be slaves or free, but who should be master. Ambition is the same thing in private that it is in public; and the duties are effectually the same between the master of a kingdom and the master of a family. As I would treat some servants kindly because they are worthy, and others to make them so; so, on the other side, I would have a servant to reverence his master; and rather to love him than fear him. Some there are that think this too little for a master, though it is all that we pay even to our God. The body of a servant may be bought and sold, but his mind is free.

EPISTLE XVIII.

Of life and death; of good and evil.

It is without dispute, that the loss of a friend is one of the greatest trials of human frailty; and no man is so much exalted above the sense of that calamity as not to be affected with it. And yet if a man bear it bravely, they cry, "He has no sense of goodness or good nature in him;" if he sink under it, they call him effeminate : so that he lies both ways under a reproach. And what is the ground of the trouble, I beseech you, but that he might have lived longer in respect of his years; and in effect that he ought to have done so

in regard of his usefulness to the world? I cannot but wonder to

see men that are really just and temperate in all their dealings with men, and in business, so exceedingly to forget themselves in this point. But we have, in excuse of this error, the failings of the whole world with us for company. For even those that are the most scrupulously conscientious toward men, are yet unthankful to their God.

It is not the number of days that makes a life long, but the full employment of them upon the main end and purpose of life; which is the perfecting of the mind, in making a man the absolute master of himself. I reckon the matter of age among external things: the main point is, to live and die with honor. Every man that lives is upon the way, and must go through with his journey, without stopping till he comes at the end: and wheresoever it ends, if it ends well, it is a perfect life. There is an invincible fate that attends all mortals; and one generation is condemned to tread upon the heels of another. Take away from life the power of death, and it is a slavery. As Caligula was passing upon the way, an old man that was a prisoner, and with a beard down to his girdle, made it his request to Cæsar that he might be put to death. "Why," says Cæsar to him, 66 are you not dead already?" So that you see some desire

it as well as others fear it; and why not? when it is one of the duties of life to die, and it is one of the comforts of it too; for the living are under the power of Fortune, but she has no dominion at all over the dead. How can life be pleasant to any man that is not prepared to part with it? or what loss can be easier to us than that which can never be missed or desired again? I was brought by a defluxion into a hopeless consumption, and I had it many times in my thought to deliver myself from a miserable life by a violent death; but the tenderness I had for an aged and indulgent father held my hands; for, thought I to myself, it will be very hard for my father to be without me, though I could most willingly part with myself. In the case of a particular disease, a physician may propound a remedy; but the only remedy, for all diseases, is the contempt of death. (Though I know too, that it is the business of a long life to learn that lesson.)