a surgeon.

But this shall not hinder me from lancing and probing, because of the cries and groans of the patient. Every man should have a monitor at his elbow to keep him from avarice, by showing him how rich a man may be with a little from ambition, by representing the disquiets and hazards that accompany greatness; which makes him as great a burden to others as he is to himself. When it comes to that once, fear, anxiety, and weariness make us philosophers. A sickly fortune produces wholesome counsels; and we reap this fruit from our adversity, that it brings us at last to wisdom.

Now, though clemency in a prince be so necessary and so profitable a virtue, and cruelty so dangerous an excess; it is yet the office of a governor, as of the master of an hospital, to keep sick and mad men in order, and in cases of extremity, the very member is to be cut off with the ulcer. All punishment is either for amendment or for example, or that others may live more secure. What is the end of destroying those poisonous and dangerous creatures, which are never to be reclaimed, but to prevent mischief? And yet there may be as much hazard in doing too much as too little. A particular mutineer may be punished, but when the whole army is in a revolt, there must be a general pardon. The multitude of offenders is their security and protection; for there is no quarreling with a public vice, where the custom of offending takes away the shame of it; and it is not prudent neither, by many punishments, to show a city that the unrighteous are so much the major part: beside, that it is as great a dishonor for a prince to have many executions, as for a physician to have many funerals. Shall a father disinherit à son for the first offence? Let him first admonish, then threaten, and afterward punish him. So long as there is hope, we should apply gentle remedies; but some nations are intractable, and neither willing to serve, nor fit to command; and some persons are incorrigible too.

29*

EPISTLE XXI.

The two blessings of life are a sound body and a quiet mind. The extravagance of the Roman luxury: the moderation and simplicity of former times.

EPICURUS makes the two blessings of life to be a sound body and a quiet mind; which is only a compendious reduction of human felicity to a state of health and of virtue. The way to be happy is to make vice not only odious, but ridiculous, and every man to mind his own business; for he that torments himself for other people's misfortunes shall never be at rest. A virtuous life must be all of a piece, and not advanced by starts and intervals, and then to go on where it left; for this is losing ground. We are to press and persevere; for the main difficulties are yet to come. If I discontinue my course, when shall I come to pronounce these words? I am a conqueror. Not a conqueror of barbarous enemies and savage nations; but I have subdued avarice, ambition, and those lusts that have subjected even the greatest conquerors. Who was a greater than Alexander, that extended his empire from Thracia to the utmost bounds of the East? but yet he burnt Persepolis at the request of a prostitute, to gratify his lust. He overcame Darius, and slew many thousands of the Persians; but yet he murdered Calisthenes, and that single blot has tarnished the glory of all his victories. All the wishes of mortals, and all the benefits which we can either give or receive, are of very little conducement to a happy life. Those things which the common people gape after, are transitory and vain ; whereas happiness is permanent: nor is it to be estimated by number, measure, or parts; for it is full and perfect. I do not speak as if I myself were arrived at that blessed state of repose; but it is something yet to be on the mending hand. It is with me as with a man that is creeping out of a disease; he feels yet some grudgings of it, he is every foot examining of his pulse, and suspects every

Just at that rate I am

touch of heat to be a relic of his fever. jealous of myself. The best remedy that I know in this case is to go on with confidence, and not to be misled by the errors of other people. It is with our manners as with our healths; it is a degree of virtue, the abatement of vice, as it is a degree of health, the abatement of a fit.

Some place their happiness in wealth, some in the liberty of the body, and others in the pleasures of the sense and palate. But what are metals, tastes, sounds, or colors, to the mind of a reasonable creature? He that sets his heart upon riches, the very fear of poverty will be grievous to him; he that is ambitious, shall be galled with envy at any man that gets before him; for, in that case, he that is not first is last. I do not speak against riches neither; for if they hurt a man, it is his own folly. They may be indeed the cause of mischief, as they are a temptation to those that do it. Instead of courage, they may inspire us with arrogance; and instead of greatness of mind, with insolence; which is in truth but the counterfeit of magnanimity. What is it to be a prisoner, and in chains? It is no more than that condition to which many princes have been reduced, and out of which many men have been advanced to the authority of princes. It is not to say, "I have no master;" in time you may have one. Might not Hecuba, Croesus, and the mother of Darius, have said as much? And where is the happiness of luxury either,when a man divides his life between the kitchen and the stews; between an anxious conscience and a nauseous stomach? Caligula, who was born to show the world what mischief might be done by concurrence of unrighteousness and a great fortune, spent near £10,000 sterling upon a supper. The works and inventions of it are prodigious, not only in the counterfeiting of nature, but even in surpassing it. The Romans had their brooks even in their parlors; and found their dinners under their tables. The mullet was reckoned stale unless it died in the hand of the guest: and they had their glasses to put them into, that they might the better observe all the changes and motions of them in the last agony between life and death.

"Look how it red

Take notice of

So that they fed their eyes before their bodies. dens," says one; "there is no vermilion like it. these veins; and that same gray brightens upon the head of it. And now he is at his last gasp: see how pale he turns, and all of a color." These people would not have given themselves half this trouble with a dying friend; nay, they would leave a father or a brother at his last hour to entertain themselves with the barbarous spectacle of an expiring fish. And that which enhances the esteem of every thing, is the price of it; insomuch that water itself, which ought to be gratuitous, is exposed to sale in their conservatories of ice and snow. Nay, we are troubled that we cannot buy breath, light, and that we have the air itself gratis, as if our conditions were evil because Nature has left something to us in common. But luxury contrives ways to set a price upon the most necessary and communicable benefits in nature: even those benefits which are free to birds and beasts, as well as to men, and serve indifferently for the use of the most sluggish creatures. But how comes it that fountain-water is not cold enough to serve us, unless it be bound up into ice? So long as the stomach is sound, Nature discharges her functions without trouble; but when the blood comes to be inflamed with excess of wine or meats, simple water is not cold enough to allay that heat; and we are forced to make use of remedies; which remedies themselves are vices. We heap suppers upon dinners, and dinners upon suppers, without intermission. Good God! how easy is it to quench a sound and an honest thirst! But when the palate is grown callous, we taste nothing; and that which we take for thirst, is only the rage of a fever. Hippocratus delivered it as an aphorism, that 66 women were never bald nor gouty, but in one singular case.' Women have not altered their nature since, but they have changed the course of their lives; for, by taking the liberties of men, they partake as well of their diseases as of their baseness. They sit up as much, drink as much; nay, in their very appetites they are masculine too; they have lost the advantages of their sex by their vices.

Our ancestors, when they were free, lived either in caves or in

arbors; but slavery came in with gildings and with marble. I would have him that comes into my house take more notice of the master than of the furniture. The golden age was before architecture: arts came in with luxury, and we do not hear of any philosopher that was either a locksmith or a painter. Who was the wiser man, think you, he that invented a saw, or the other who, upon seeing a boy drink water out of the hollow of his hand, brake his pitcher, with this check to himself; "What a fool am I, to trouble myself with superfluities!" Carving is one man's trade, cooking another's; only he is more miserable that teaches it for pleasure than he that learns it for necessity. It was luxury, not philosophy, that invented fish-pools as well as palaces; where, in case of bad weather at sea, they might have fishes to supply their gluttony in harbor. We do not only pamper our lusts, but provoke them; as if we were to learn the very art or voluptuousness. What was it but avarice that originally brake the union of society, and proved the cause of poverty, even to those that were the most wealthy? Every man possessed all, until the world came to appropriate possessions to themselves. In the first age Nature was both a law and a guide, and the best goyerned; which was but according to Nature too. The largest and the strongest bull leads the herd; the goodliest elephant; and among men too, in the blessed times of innocence, the best was uppermost. They chose governors for their manners, who neither acted any violence nor suffered any. They protected the weak against the mighty; and persuaded or dissuaded as they saw occasion. Their prudence provided for their people; their courage kept them safe from dangers; their bounty both supplied and adorned their subjects. It was a duty then to command, not a government. No man in those days had either a mind to do an injury or a cause for it. He that commanded well was well obeyed; and the worst menace the governors could then make to the disobedient, was to forsake them. But with the corruption of times, tyranny crept in, and the world began to have need of laws; and those laws were made by wise men too, as Solon and Lycurgus, who learned their trade in the school of Pythagoras.