it without ruin, or, which is more inconvenient and injurious, without ruining the people. As to the rest, you there lose all, and even your friends will be more ready to accuse your want of vigilance and your improvidence than to pity you, and the ignorance and heedlessness of your profession. That so many garrisoned houses have been lost, whereas this of mine remains, makes me apt to suspect that they were only lost by being guarded; this gives an enemy both an invitation and colour of reason; all defence shows a face of war. Let who will come to me, in God's name; but I shall not invite them. "Tis retirement I have chosen, for my repose from war. I endeavour to withdraw this corner from the public tempest, as I also do another corner in my soul. Our war may put on what forms it will, multiply and diversify itself into new parties; for my own part, I shall not budge. Amongst so many garrisoned houses, I am the only person of my condition, that I know of, who have purely entrusted mine to the protection of Heaven, without removing either plate, deeds, or hangings. I will neither fear nor save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgment can acquire the divine favour, it will serve me to the end; if not, I have still continued long enough to render my continuance remarkable and recordable.-I have lived thirty years! CHAPTER XVI. OF GLORY. THERE is the name and the thing; the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, or of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and without it. ง How the name of God may be increased. God, who is all fulness in himself, and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add any thing to himself within; but his name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to his exterior works, which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in him, forasmuch as he can have no accession of good, we attribute it to his name, which is the part out of him that is nearest to us; thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of melioration, 'tis to this that we ought to employ all our endeavours; we are all hollow and empty; 'tis not with wind and voice that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair us; a man starved with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to provide himself with a gay garment than a good meal; we are to look after that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinary prayers, Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus:1 "Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men." We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essential qualities; exterior ornaments should be looked after, when we have made provision for necessary things. Divinity treats amply and more pertinently of this subject, but I am not much versed in it. 2 Chrysippus and Diogenes were the first and the most constant authors of the contempt of glory, and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there was none more dangerous, nor more to be avoided, than that which we derive from the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of many very hurtful treasons in it; there is nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor any thing whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favour with them; nor panderism so ably and usually made use of to corrupt the 2 Cicero, de Finib. iii. 17. 1 St. Luke, ii. 14. chastity of women, than to wheedle and entertain them with their own praises; the first charm the Syrens made use of to allure Ulysses was of this nature :— "Noble Ulysses, turn thee to this side, Of Greece the greatest ornament and pride." 1 These philosophers said that all the glory of the world was not worth an understanding man's holding out his finger to obtain it : 2 Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est? 8 "What's glory in the high'st degree, If still it only glory be?" I say for it alone, for it often brings several commodities along with it, for which it may be justly desired; it acquires us good-will, and renders us less subject and exposed to the injuries and insults of others, and the like. It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus; for this precept of his sect, Conceal thy life, that forbids men to encumber themselves with offices and public negotiations, does also necessarily presuppose a contempt of glory, which is the world's approbation of those actions we produce in evidence. He that bids us conceal ourselves, and have no other concern but for ourselves, and that will not have us known to others, would much less have us honoured and glorified; and 'tis thus he advises Idomeneus not in any sort to regulate his actions by the common reputation or opinion, except to avoid the other accidental inconveniences that the contempt of men might bring upon him. Those discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn. Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they are great, and worthy of such a philosopher, and yet they carry some marks of the recommendation of his name, and of that humour he had 1 Homer, Odyssey, xii. 184. 2 Cicero, ut supra. 8 Juvenal, vii. 81. decried by his precepts. Here is a letter1 that he dictated a little before his last gasp: "Epicurus to Hermachus, health. "Whilst I was passing over the happiest and last day of my life, I wrote this, but at the same time afflicted with such a pain in my bladder and bowels that nothing can be greater; but it was recompensed with the pleasure the remembrance of my discoveries and doctrines suggested to my soul. Now, as the affection thou hast ever from thy infancy borne towards me and philosophy requires, take upon thee the protection of Metrodorus's children." This is the letter: and that which makes me interpret that the pleasure he says he had in his soul, concerning his discoveries, has some reference to the reputation he hoped for after his death, is the manner of his will, in which he gives order, "That Amynomachus and Timocrates, his heirs, should every January defray, for the celebration of his birthday, the expense that Hermachus should appoint; and also the expense that should be made the twentieth of every moon, in entertaining the philosophers, his friends, who should assemble in honour of the memory of him and Metrodorus." 2 itself. Carneades was head of the contrary opinion; and mainGlory desirable for tained that glory was to be desired for itself;" even as we embrace our posthumes for themselves, having no knowledge or enjoyment of them. This opinion has not failed to be more universally followed, as those commonly are that are most suitable to our inclinations. Aristotle gives it the first place amongst external goods; "avoid as two extreme vices, immoderation, either in seeking or evading it." I believe, if we had the books Cicero wrote upon this subject, we should have fine harangues about 1 Cicero, de Finib. ii. 30. In Laertius, Life of Epicurus, this letter is mentioned as being addressed to Idomeneus.-Villoison (Anec. Græc. tom. ii. p. 159,) and Visconti (Iconograp. Græc. tom. i. p. 216) have shown that the name should 2 Cicero, de Finib. ii. 81. it; for he was so madly possessed with this passion, that if he had dared, I think he could willingly have Cicero very amfallen into the excess that others did, that bitious of glory. virtue itself was not to be coveted but upon the account of the honour that always attends it :— Paulum sepultæ distat inertiæ Celata virtus:1 "For hidden virtue's much the same as none:" which is an opinion so false that I am vexed it could ever enter into the understanding of a man that was honoured with the name of a philosopher. Is If this were true, men need not be virtuous but in public; and should be no further concerned to keep the operations of the soul, which is the true seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they were to arrive at the knowledge of others. there no more in it than but only slily and with circumspection to do ill? "If thou knowest," says Carneades,2 “ of a serpent lurking in a place, where, without suspicion, a person is going to sit down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if thou dost not give him caution of his danger; and so much the more because the action is to be known by none but thyself." If we do not take up ourselves a rule of well-doing, if impunity passes with us for justice, to how many sorts of wickedness shall we every day abandon ourselves? I do not find what Sextus Peduceus did, in faithfully restoring the treasure that C. Plotius had committed to his sole secrecy and trust, a thing that I have often done myself, so commendable, as I should think it an execrable baseness to have done otherwise; and I hold it of good use in our days to introduce the example of P. Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses to have entered upon an inheritance contrary to his conscience, not only not against law, but even by the determination of the laws themselves; and M. 1 Hor. Od. iv. 9, 29. 2 Cicero, de Finib. ii. 18. 8 8 Id. ib. |