Singularity in dress and living, an ambitious vanity.

unless we make it all our own by habit and practice, and improve both the world and ourselves by an example of life answerable to their precepts.

AGAINST SINGULARITY OF MANNERS AND BE

HAVIOUR.

It is the humour of many people, to be singular in their dress and manner of life, only to the end that they may be taken notice of. Their clothes, forsooth, must be coarse and slovenly; their heads and beards neglected, their lodgings upon the ground, and they live in an open defiance of money. What is all this, upon the whole matter, but an ambitious vanity, that has crept in at the back-door? A wise man will keep himself clear of all these fooleries, without disturbing public customs, or making himself a gazing-stock to the people. But, will this secure him, think you? I can no more warrant it, than that a temperate man shall have his health; but it is very probable that it may. A philosopher has enough to do to stand right in the world, let him be ever so modest; and his outside shall be still like that of other people, let them be ever so unlike within. His garments shall be neither rich nor sordid. No matter for arms, mottoes, and other curiosities upon his plate; but he shall not yet make it a matter of conscience to have no plate at all. He that likes an earthen vessel as well as a silver, has not a greater mind than he that uses plate, and reckons it as dirt. It is our duty to live better than the common people, but not in opposition to them, as if philosophy were a faction; for by so doing, instead of reforming and gaining upon them, we drive

A wise man should live as he discourses.

them away; and when they find it unreasonable to imitate us in all things, they will follow us in nothing. Our business must be to live according to nature, and to own the sense of outward things with other people: not to torment the body, and with exclamations against that which is sweet and cleanly, to delight in nastiness, and to use, not only a coarse, but a sluttish and offensive diet. Wisdom preaches temperance, not mortification; and a man may be a very good husband, without being a sloven. He that steers a middle course, betwixt virtue and popularity; that is to say, betwixt good manners and discretion, shall gain both approbation and reverence. But, what if a man governs himself in his clothes, in his diet, in his exercises, as he ought to do? It is not that his garments, his meat, and drink, or his walking, are things simply good, but it is the tenor of a man's life, and the conformity of it to nature and right reason. Philosophy obliges us to humanity, society, and the ordinary use of external things. It is not a thing to pleasure the people with, or to entertain an idle hour, but a study for the forming of the mind, and the guidance of human life. And a wise man should also live as he discourses, and in all points be like himself; and, in the first place, set a value upon himself, before he can pretend to become valuable to others. As well our good deeds, as our evil, come home to us at last; he that is charitable, makes others so by his example, and finds the comfort of that charity when he wants it himself. He that is cruel, seldom finds mercy. It is a hard matter for a man to be both popular and virtuous; for he must be like the people that would oblige them; and the kindness of dishonest men is not to be acquired

A fool is surprised at every thing.

by honest means. He lives by reason, not by custom; he shuns the very conversation of the intemperate and ambitious. He knows the danger of great examples of wickedness, and that public errors impose upon the world, under the authority of precedents; for they take for granted that they are never out of the way, so long as they keep the road.

We are beset with dangers, and therefore a wise man should have his virtues in continual readiness to encounter them. Whether poverty, loss of friends, pains, sickness, or the like, he still maintains his post: whereas a fool is surprised at every thing, and afraid of his very succours; either he makes no resistance at all, or he does it by halves. He will neither take advice from others, nor look to himself: he reckons upon philosophy as a thing not worth his time; and if he can but get the reputation of a good man among the common people, he takes no further care, but accounts that he has done his duty.

THE BLESSINGS OF A VIGOROUS MIND.

WHEN I call Claranus my schoolfellow, I need not say any thing more of his age, having told you that he and I were contemporaries. You would not imagine how green and vigorous his mind is, and the perpetual conflict that it has with his body. They were naturally ill-matched, unless to shew that a generous spirit may be lodged under any shape. He has surmounted all difficulties, and, from the contempt of himself, is advanced to the contempt of all things else. When I consider him well, methinks his body appears to me as

Pertinent reflections upon old age.

fair as his mind. If nature could have brought the soul naked into the world, perhaps, she would have done it; but yet she does a greater thing, in exalting that soul above all impediments of the flesh. It is a great happiness, to preserve the force of the mind in the decay of the body; and to see the loss of appetite more than requited with the love of virtue. But, whether I owe this comfort to my age, or to wisdom, is the question. And whether, if I could any longer, I would not still do the same things over again, which I ought not to do. If age had no other pleasure than this, that it neither cares for any thing, nor stands in need of any thing, it were a great one to me, to have left all my painful and troublesome lusts behind me. But, it is uneasy, you will say, to be always in fear of death. As if that apprehension did not concern a young man as well as an old, or that death only called us according to our years. I am, however, beholden to my old age, that has now confined me to my bed, and put me out of condition of doing those things any longer which I should not do. The less my mind has to do with my body, the better. And if age puts an end to my desires, and does the business of virtue, there can be no cause of complaint; nor can there be any gentler end, than to melt away in a kind of dissolution. in a kind of dissolution. Where fire meets with opposition, and matter to work upon, it is furious, and rages; but where it finds no fuel, as in old age, it goes out quietly, for want of nourishment. Nor is the body the settled habitation of the mind, but a temporary lodging, which we are to leave whensoever the master of the house pleases. Neither does the soul, when it has left the body, any more care what becomes of the car

Our hopes, avarice, and ambition, are boundless.

case, and the several parts of it, than a man does for the shavings of his beard under the hands of the barber. There is not any thing exposes a man to more vexation and reproach, than the overmuch love of the body: for sense neither looks forward nor backward, but only upon the present; nor does it judge of good or evil, or foresee consequences which give a connection to the order and series of things, and to the unity of life. Not but that every man has naturally a love for his own carcase, as poor people love even their own beggarly cottages; they are old acquaintances, and loth to part: and I am not against the indulging of it either, provided that I make not myself a slave to it; for he that serves it has many masters. Beside that, we are in continual disorder, one while with gripes, pains in the head, tooth-ach, gout, stone, defluxions; sometimes with too much blood, other while with too little; and yet this frail and putrid carcase of ours, values itself as if it were immortal. We put no bounds to our hopes, our avarice, our ambition. The same man is Vatinius today, and Cato to-morrow; this hour as luxurious as Apicius, and the next as temperate as Tubero; now for a mistress, by and by for a wife; imperious this hour, servile the next; thrifty and prodigal, laborious and voluptuous, by turns. But still the goods, or the ills of the body, do but concern the body, (which is peevish, sour, and anxious,) without any effect upon a well composed mind. I was the other day at my villa, and complaining of my charge of repairs. My bailiff told me— "It was none of his fault, for the house was old, and he had much ado to keep it from falling upon his head." Well, thought I, and what am I myself then,