tion raving and idleness, and furnishing and fitting ourselves. up building castles in the air; looking upon themselves as a third person only, and a stranger. If any one is charmed with his own knowledge, whilst he looks only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward toward past ages and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot. If he enter into a flattering vanity of his personal valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas, so many armies and nations that leave him so far behind, and he will be cured of his self-opinion. No particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put the so many weak and imperfect ones he has in him in the other scale, and the nothingness of human condition to balance the weight. Because Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his God, "To know himself;" and by that study Why Socrates was reckoned the only was arrived to the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whoever shall so know himself, let him boldly speak out and make himself known.

wise man.

CHAPTER VII.

ought to be dis

OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR.

THOSE Who wrote the life of Augustus Cæsar1 observe Honorary rewards this in his military discipline-that he was wonpensed with very derfully liberal of gifts to men of merit; but great discretion. that as to the pure recompenses of honour he was altogether as sparing; he himself had been gratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had

1 Suetonius, in Vita.

ever been in the field. It was a pretty invention, and received into most governments of the world, to institute certain vain and in themselves valueless distinctions, to honour and recompense valour or virtue; such as crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle; the particular fashion of some garment; the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or to have a torch by night some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies; the prerogative of certain additional names and titles; certain distinctions in their bearing of coats of arms, and the like; the use of which, according to the several humours of nations, has been variously received, and does yet continue.

hood instituted to

We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have the orders of knighthood, that were instituted only Orders of knightfor this end. And it is, indeed, a very good reward military and profitable custom to find out an acknowl- virtue. edgment for the worth of excellent and extraordinary men; and to satisfy their ambition with rewards that are not at all costly either to prince or people. And what has been always found both by ancient experience, and which we ourselves may also have observed in our own times, that men of quality have ever been more jealous of such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is not without very good ground and reason. If with reward, which ought to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other emoluments, and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of esteem, would vilify and debase it. The order of St. Michael,' which has been so long The Order of St. in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that it had no communication with any other; which produced this effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the gentry pretended with so great a desire and affection as they did to this order; nor quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur; virtue more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to a recompense truly her own, and rather honourable than beneficial.

Michael.

1 Instituted by an ordonnance of Louis XI. at Amboise, 1st August, 1469.

For, in truth, the other rewards have not so great a dignity in them, by reason they are laid out upon all sorts of occasions. With money a man pays the wages of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking, and the vilest offices we receive; nay, we reward vice with it, too, as flattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore 'tis no wonder if virtue less desires, and less willingly receives, this common sort of payment, than that which is proper and peculiar to her, as being truly generous and noble. Augustus was right in being a better husband and more sparing of this than the other, by how much honour is a privilege that extracts its principal essence from its rarity, and virtue the same.

Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest? 1

"To whom none seemeth bad, who good can seem?"

zens of Sparta.

We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is careful in the bringing up of his children, by reason it is a common act, how just and well done soever, no more than we commend a great tree where the whole forest Valour of the citi- is the same. I do not think that any citizen of Sparta valued himself upon his valour, it being the universal virtue of the whole nation, and as little prided himself upon his fidelity and contempt of riches. There is no recompense to virtue, how great soever, that is once become a general custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever call it great, being common.

Seeing then that these rewards of honour have no other value and estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, 'tis but to be liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should be more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the value of it, nevertheless, ought not to be abated, nor the honour made cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it now than formerly; for there is no virtue that so easily diffuses itself as that of military valour. There is another true, per

1 Martial, xii. 82.

2 That of St. Michael.

fect, and philosophical, of which I do not speak (and only make use of the word in the common acceptation), much greater than this, and more full, which is a strength and assurance of soul, despising equally all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform, and constant, of which ours is but a little ray. Use, bringing up, example and custom, can do all in all in the establishment of that which I am speaking of, and with great facility render it common, as by the experience of our civil war is manifest enough; and whoever could at this instant unite us all, Catholics and Huguenots, into one body, and set us upon some common enterprise, we should make our ancient military reputation flourish again. It is most certain that in times past the recompense of this order had not only a regard to valour, but had a farther prospect. It never was the reward of a valiant soldier, but of a great captain; the science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so honourable a guerdon. There was therein a more universal military expertness required, which comprehended the most and the greatest qualities of a military man: Neque enim eædem militares et imperatoriæ artes sunt. "For the qualities of a soldier and of a general are not the same; and, besides, a man was to be of a birth and rank suitable to such a dignity. But I say, though more men should be worthy now than formerly, yet ought it not to be more liberally distributed; and it were better to fall short and not give it to all to whom it may be due, than for ever to lose, as we have lately done, the fruit of so useful an invention. No man of spirit will vouchsafe to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such of the present time as have least merited this recompense make the greater show of disclaiming it, intending thereby to be ranked with those to whom so much wrong has been done, by the unworthy conferring and debasing the distinction which was their particular right.

Now to expect, in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly to create and bring into credit a like institution, is not

VOL. II.

It is difficult to bring a new order of knighthood into credit.

a proper attempt for so licentious and sick a time as this in which we now are; and it will fall out that the last will, from its birth, incur the same inconveniences that have ruined the other. The rules for the dispensing of this new order had need to be extremely clipped, and bound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuous season is incapable of such a curb. Besides that, before this can be brought into reputation, 'tis necessary that the memory of the first, and the contempt into which it is fallen, should be totally buried in oblivion.

Valour the chief

French.

This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the consideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others; but Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this, neverthevirtue among the less, is worth considering, that our nation places valour (vaillance) in the highest degree of virtue, as the very word itself shows, being derived from value (valeur); and that, according to our custom, when we mean a worthy man, or a man of value (homme vaillant), it is only in our court style to say a valiant man, after the Roman way; for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from force. The proper, sole, and essential occupation of the French nobility and gentry is the practice of arms. It is likely that the first virtue which discovered itself amongst men, and that has given some advantage over others, was this, by which the strongest and most valiant have mastered the weaker, and acquired a particular rank and reputation, whence this honour and name remained to them. Or else that these nations, being very warlike, have given the preeminence to that of the virtues which was most familiar to them, and which they thought of the most worthy

1 The order of Saint Esprit (the Holy Ghost), instituted by Henry III. in 1578.

2 Virtus, vis. "Le mot de vertu vient

de force; la force est la base de toute vertu; la vertu n'appartient qu'à un être foible par sa nature, et fort par sa, volonte."-Rousseau, Emile, v.