look upon kings and conquerors *: I will not tell that many of them fall into the condition of servants, and their subjects rule over them, and stand upon the ruins of their families, and that to such persons the sorrow is bigger than usually happens in smaller fortunes: but let us suppose them still conquerors, and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains, and amazing fears, and continual dangers. They carry their arms beyond Isther, and pass the Euphrates, and bind the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhine: I speak in the style of the Roman greatness; for now-a-days the biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty province or two, and a hill confines the progress of their prosperity, or a river checks it. But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons, is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of heaven. And if we should suppose the pismires had but our understanding, they also would have the method of a man's greatness, and divide their little mole-hills into provinces and exarchates; and if they also grew as vicious and as miserable, one of their princes would lead an army out, and kill his neighbour ants, that he might reign over the next handful of a turf. But then if we consider at what price and with what felicity all this is purchased, the sting of the painted snake will quickly * Vilis servus habet regni bona; celláque capti Deridet festam Romuleámque casam. Petron. Ompia, crede mihi, etiam felicibus dubià sunt. Seneca. appear, and the fairest of their fortunes will properly enter into this account of human infelicities. We may guess at it by the constitution of Augustus' fortune, who struggled for his power, first with the Roman citizens, then with Brutus and Cassius, and all the fortune of the republic, then with his colleague, Mark Antony, then with his kindred and nearest relatives and after he was wearied with slaughter of the Romans, before he could sit down and rest in his imperial chair, he was forced to carry armies into Macedonia, Galatia, beyond Euphrates, Rhine, and Danubius; and when he dwelt at home in greatness, and within the circles of a mighty power, he hardly escaped the sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus, Cepio, and Murœna: and after he had entirely reduced the felicity and grandeur into his own family, his daughter, his only child, conspired with many of the young nobility, and being joined with adulterous complications as with an impious sacrament*, they affrighted and destroyed the fortune of the old man, and wrought him more sorrow than all the troubles that were hatched in the baths and beds of Egypt, between Antony and Cleopatra. This was the greatest fortune that the world had then or ever since; and therefore we cannot expect it to be better in a less prosperity. 6. The prosperity of this world is so infinitely soured with the overflowing of evils, that he is counted the most happy who hath the fewest; all conditions *Et adulterio velut sacramento adacti. Tacit. L. Plusque et iterum timenda cum Antonio mulier. being evil and miserable, they are only distinguished by the number of calamities. The collector of the Roman and foreign examples, when he had reckoned two and twenty instances of great fortunes, every one of which had been allayed with great variety of evils; in all his reading or experience, he could tell but of two who had been famed for an entire prosperity. Quintus Metellus, and Gyges the king of Lydia. And yet concerning one of them, he tells, that his felicity was so inconsiderable (and yet it was the bigger of the two) that the oracle said, that Aglaus Sophidius the poor Arcadian shepherd, was more happy than he, that is, he had fewer troubles: for so indeed we are to reckon the pleasures of this life; the limit of our joy, is the absence of some degrees of sorrow, and he that hath the least of this is the most prosperous person. But then we must look for prosperity, not in palaces or courts of princes, not in the tents of conquerors, or in the gaities of fortunate and prevailing sinners; but something rather in the cottages of honest, innocent, and contented persons, whose mind is no bigger than their fortune, nor their virtue less than their security. As for others, whose fortune looks bigger, and allures fools to follow it, like the wandering fires of the night, till they run into rivers, or are broken upon rocks with staring and running after them, they are all in the condition of Marius, than whose condition nothing was more constant, and nothing more mutable. If we reckon them amongst the happy, they are the most happy men: if we reckon them amongst the miserable, they are the most miserable*. For just as is a man's condition, great or little, so is the state of his misery. All have their share; but kings and princes, great generals and consuls, rich men and mighty, as they have the biggest business and the biggest charge, and are answerable to God for the greatest accounts, so they have the biggest trouble; that the uneasiness of their appendage may divide the good and evil of the world, making the poor man's fortune as eligible as the greatest; and also restraining the vanity of man's spirit, which a great fortune is apt to swell from a vapour to a bubble, but God in mercy hath mingled wormwood with their wine, and so restrained the drunkenness and follies of prosperity. 7. Man never hath one day to himself of entire peace from the things of the world, but either something troubles him, or nothing satisfies him, or his very fulness swells him, and makes him breathe short upon his bed. Men's joys are troublesome; and besides that, the fear of losing them takes away the present pleasure (and a man hath need of another felicity to preserve this;) they are also wavering and full of trepidation, not only from their inconstant nature, but from their weak foundation; they rise from vanity, and they dwell upon ice, and they converse with the wind, and they have the wings of a bird, and are serious; but as the resolutions of a child, commenced * Quem si inter miseros posueris, miserrimus; inter felicis, felicissimus reperiebatur. by chance, and managed by folly, and procced by inadvertency, and end in vanity and forgetfulness. So that, as Livius Drusius said of himself, he never had any play-days, or days of quiet, when he was a boy*; for he was troublesome and busy, a restless and unquiet man: the same may every man observe to be true of himself; he is always restless and uneasy, he dwells upon the waters, and leans upon thorns, and lays his head upon a sharp stone. SECT. V. This Consideration reduced to Practice. 1. THE effect of this consideration is this; that the sadnesses of this life help to sweeten the bitter cup of death. For let our life be never so long, if our strength were great as that of oxen and camels, if our sinews were strong as the cordage at the foot of an oak, if we were as fighting and prosperous people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on the prevailing side in an hundred and twenty battles, who had three hundred and twelve public rewards assigned him by his generals and princes for his valour and conduct in sieges and sharp encounters, and, besides all this, had his share in nine triumphs; yet still the period shall be, that all this shall end in death, and the people shall talk of us awhile, good or bad, according as we de *Uni sibi nec puero unquam ferias contigisse. Seditiosus et foro gravis. |