because it is the same he has seen you a hundred times employ against him for having ill-washed a glass, or set a stool out of place; secondly, that they are not angry to no purpose, but make sure that their reprehensions reach him with whom they are offended; for ordinarily they rail and bawl before he comes into their presence, and continue scolding an age after he is gone : Et secum petulans amentia certat: 1 "And petulant madness with itself contends:" they attack his shadow, and push the storm in a place where no one is either chastised or interested, but in the clamour of their voice. I likewise in quarrels condemn those who huff and vapour without an enemy; these rhodomontades should be reserved to discharge upon the offending party : The author's Mugitus veluti cum prima in prælia taurus anger on great and little occasions. He pushes at the winds; he digs the strand With his black hoofs, and spurns the yellow sand." When I am angry, my anger is very sharp, but withal very short, and as private as I can; I lose myself, indeed, in promptness and violence, but not in trouble, so that I throw out all sorts of injurious words at random, and without choice, and never consider pertinently to dart my language where I think it will deepest wound; for I commonly make use of no other weapon in my anger than my tongue. My servants have a better bargain of me in great occasions than in little; the little ones surprise me; and the mischief on't is that, when you are once over the precipice, 'tis no matter who gave you the push, for 1 Claudian, in Eutrop. i. 237. 2 Eneid, xii. 103 you always go to the bottom; the fall urges, moves, and makes haste of itself. In great occasions this satisfies me, that they are so just, every one expects a reasonable indignation; and then I glorify myself in deceiving their expectation; against these I fortify and prepare myself; they disturb my head, and threaten to transport me very far, should I follow them; I can easily contain myself from entering into one of these passions, and am strong enough, when I expect them, to repel their violence, be the cause never so great; but if a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away, be it for never so small a matter; I bargain thus with those who may have to contend with me: "When you see me first moved, let me alone, right or wrong; I'll do the same for you." The storm is only begot, by concurrence of angers, which easily spring from one another, and are not born together; let every one have his own way, and we shall be always at peace. A profitable advice, but hard to execute. Sometimes, also, it falls out that I put on a seeming anger, for the better governing of my house, without any real emotion. As age renders my humours more sharp, I study to oppose them; and will, if I can, order it so that, for the future, I may be so much the less peevish and hard to please, as I have more excuse and inclination to be so, although I have heretofore been reckoned amongst those that have the greatest patience. Aristotle says 1" that Whether wrath is virtue and valour. A word to conclude this chapter. anger sometimes serves for arms to virtue and valour." "Tis likely it may be so; neverthe- proper to animate less, they who contradict him2 pleasantly answer that 'tis a weapon of novel use; for we move all other arms, this moves us; our hands guide it not, 'tis it that guides our hands; it holds us, we hold not it. 1 Ethics, iii. 8. Seneca, de irâ, i. 16. CHAPTER XXXII. DEFENCE OF SENECA AND PLUTARCH. THE familiarity I have had with these two authors, and the assistance they have lent to my age and to my book, wholly built up of what I have taken from them, oblige me to stand up for their honour. As to Seneca, amongst a million of little pamphlets that those of the so-called reformed religion disperse abroad for the defence of their cause, and which sometimes proceed from so good a hand that 'tis pity his pen is not employed in a better subject, I have formerly seen one that, to complete the parallel he would fain make out betwixt the government of our late poor King Charles the Ninth and that of Nero, compares the late Cardinal of Lorraine with Seneca; their fortunes, in having both of them been prime ministers in the government of their princes, and their manners, conditions, and deportments, having been very near alike. Wherein, in my opinion, he does the said lord-cardinal a very great honour; for though I am one of those who have a very great esteem for his wit, eloquence, and zeal to religion and the service of his king, and think it was a happiness for the age wherein so new, so rare, and so necessary a person to the public lived, to have an ecclesiastical person, of so high birth and dignity, and so sufficient and capable of his place; yet, to confess the truth, I do not think his capacity by many degrees near to the other, nor his virtue either so pure, entire, or steady, as that of Seneca. Now the book whereof I speak, to bring about its design, gives a very injurious description of Seneca, having borrowed his reproaches from Dion the historian, whose testimony I do not at all believe; for besides that he is inconsistent, after having called Seneca one while very wise, and, again, a mortal enemy to Nero's vices, in making him elsewhere avaricious, an usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a pretender to philosophy under false colours; his virtue manifests itself so lively and vigorous in his writings, and his vindication is so clear from any of these imputations of riches and excessive expenditure, that I cannot believe any testimony to the contrary; and, besides, it is much more reasonable to believe the Roman historians in such things, than Greeks and strangers; now, Tacitus and the rest speak very honourably both of his life and death,1 and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous person in all things; and I will allege no other reproach against Dion's report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so sickly a judgment in the Roman affairs that he dares to maintain Julius Cæsar's cause against Pompey, and that of Anthony against Cicero. Let us come to Plutarch. John Bodin is a good author of our time, and a writer of much greater judgment than the rout of scribblers of his age, and deserves to be carefully read and considered; I find him, though, a little bold in that passage of his method of history where he accuses Plutarch not only of ignorance (wherein I would let him alone, for that is not in my line), but that he often writes things incredible and absolutely fabulous; these are his own words. If he had simply said things otherwise than they are, it had been no great reproach; for what we have not seen we are forced to receive from other hands, and take upon trust; and we know that he, on purpose, sometimes variously relates the same story; as in the judgment of the three best captains that ever were, given by Hannibal; 'tis one way in the life of Flaminius, and another way in that of Pyrrhus. But to charge him 1 Tacitus, Annals, xiii. 11; xiv. 53; xv. 60. Even in Tacitus, however, there are terrible imputations against Seneca. Annal. xiv. 7, 11. See also the controversy respecting Seneca between La Harpe and Diderot. 2 A celebrated jurisconsult of Angers, highly commended by D'Aguesseau. His Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, referred to by Montaigne, was published at Paris in 1566. with having taken incredible and impossible things for current pay, is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want of judgment. And this is his example: "As," says he, "when he relates that a Lacedemonian boy suffered his bowels to be torn out by a fox-cub he had stolen, and kept it still concealed under his robe till he fell down dead, rather than he would discover his theft." I hold, in the first place, this example to be ill chosen, forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the power of the faculties of the soul, where we have greater power to limit and know the bodily force; and, therefore, if I had been he, I should rather have chosen an example of this second sort; of which there are that are less credible; as, amongst others, that which he relates of Pyrrhus, "that, all wounded as he was, he struck one of his enemies, who was armed from head to foot, so great a blow with his sword that he clave him down from his crown to his seat, so that the body was divided into two parts." In his example, I find no great miracle, nor do I admit of the salvo with which he excuses Plutarch, to have added this word, as 'tis said, to suspend our belief; for unless it be in things received by authority, and the reverence to antiquity or religion, he would never have himself admitted, or enjoined us things incredible in themselves to believe; and that this word, as 'tis said, is not put into this place to that effect, is easy to be seen, because he elsewhere relates to us, upon this subject, of The patience of the Lacedemonian the patience of the Lacedemonian children, examples happening in his time, more unlikely to prevail upon our faith; as what Cicero has testified before him, as having, as he says, been at the place; that, even in his time, there were children found, who, in the trial of patience they were put to before the altar of Diana, suffered themselves to be there whipped till the blood ran down all over their bodies, not only without crying out, but without so much as a groan, and some till they there voluntarily lost their lives; and that which Plutarch, also, amongst a hun1 Life of Lycurgus, c. iv. 2 Tusc. Quas. ii. 14. children. |