full a soul. When these wretched and dwarfish little souls gull and deceive themselves, and think to spread their fame, for having given right judgment in some affair, or kept up the discipline of the guard of the city gate, the more they think to exalt their heads, the more they show their tails. This little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first mouth, and goes no farther than from one street to another. Talk of it, in God's name, to your son or your servant; like that old fellow who, having no other auditor of his praises, nor approver of his valour, boasted to his chambermaid, crying out: "O, Peretta, what a brave man hast thou to thy master!" At the worst, talk of it to yourself; like a counsellor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cart-load of paragraphs with great heat, and as great folly, coming out of the council chamber to make water, was heard very conscientiously to mutter betwixt his teeth: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. He who can get it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse. Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate; rare and exemplary actions, to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd of little every-day performances. Marble may exalt your titles as much as you please, for having repaired a rod of a ruinous wall, or cleansed a public sewer, but not men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere estimation, according to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; neither will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, forbears to meddle with any old blear-eyed hag. Such as have known the admirable qualities of Scipio Africanus deny him the glory that Panætius attributes to him, of being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of the age he lived in.2 We have pleasures suitable to our fortunes; let us not 1 "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, be the glory."Psalm 113. 2 Cicero, de Offic. ii. 22. usurp those of grandeur. Our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure, as they are more low. If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people (quæ est ista laus, quæ possit e macello peti ? 1 "What praise is that which is to be got in the market?"), by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever. 'Tis dishonour to be so honoured. Let us learn to be no more greedy of honour than we are capable of it. To be puffed up with every action that is innocent, or of use, is only for such with whom such things are extraordinary and rare; they will value it as it costs them. How much the more a good effect makes a noise, so much I abate of the goodness of it, as I enter into suspicion that it was more performed for noise than upon the account of goodness; being exposed upon the stall, it is half sold. Those actions have much more grace and lustre that slip from the hand of him that does them negligently and without noise, and that some honest man after chooses out and raises from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account: Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quæ sine venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,2 "All things, truly, seem more laudable to me that are performed without ostentation and without the testimony of the people," says the most vainglorious man in the world. I had no care but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible effects. Innovation is of great lustre, but 'tis interdicted in this time, when we are pressed upon, and have nothing to defend ourselves from but novelties. To forbear doing is often as noble as to do; but 'tis less in the light; and the little good I have in me is almost all of this kind. In fine, occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my humour, and I thank them for it. Is there any one who desires to be sick that he may see his physician at work? And would not that physician deserve 2 Id. Tusc. Quæs. ii. 26. 1 Cicero, de Fin. ii. 15. to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he might put his art in practice? I have never been of that wicked, though common enough, humour, to desire that the trouble and disorders of this city should elevate and honour my government; I have ever willingly contributed all I could to their tranquillity and ease. He who will not thank me for the order, gentle and silent calm, that has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me by the title of my good fortune. And I am of such a composition that I would as willingly be happy as wise; and had rather owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God than to any industry or operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my unfitness for such public offices. But I have something in me yet worse than incapacity, which is that I am not much displeased at it, and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life that I have proposed to myself. Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment, but I have very near arrived at what I expected from myself, and have much surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do; for I am apt to promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to make good. I am sure that I have left no impressions of offence or hatred behind me; and as to leaving regret or desire of me amongst them, I at least know very well that I never much affected it : Mene huic confidere monstro! Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos "Wouldst thou I should a quiet sea believe, 1 Eneid, v. 849. CHAPTER XI. OF CRIPPLES. ago that they made the How many The year cut ten follow this days shorter. 'Tis now two or three years year ten days shorter in France. changes may we expect should reformation! This was properly moving heaven and earth at once. And yet nothing for all that stirs from its place; my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days, just at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them. There was no more error perceived in our old custom, than there is amendment found in this alteration. So great an uncertainty there is throughout; so gross, obscure, and dull is our perception. "Tis said that this regulation might have been carried out with less inconvenience by subtracting, after the example of Augustus, the bissextile, which is in some sort a day of hindrance and confusion, till we had exactly satisfied the debt;1 which, after all, is not paid by the correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear; and, by the same means, order might be taken for the future, providing that after the revolution of such a year, or such a number of years, the supernumerary day should be always thrown out, so that we could not henceforward err above four and twenty hours in our computation. We have no other account of time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only, and yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon; such a one, that we 1 Pope Gregory XIII. having remarked that the error of eleven minutes, which occurred in the Julian year, had given the world ten days more than it was entitled to, paid off the debt to time by at once cutting out ten days from the year 1582, proceeding at once from the 5th to the 15th of October in that year. The new mode of reckoning years is called, after his holiness, the Gregorian calendar, or New Style, while the Julian calendar is termed Old Style, which latter is still followed by the Russians and other members of the Greek Church. still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what was the true use of it. What do some say? "That the heavens, in growing old, bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put us to an uncertainty even of days and months." And what does Plutarch say ?1 “That astrology had not, in his time, determined the motion of the moon." See what a fine condition are we in to keep records of things past! human understanding, which often seeks for the causes of a fact, before there is a certainty of such fact. I was just now ruminating, as I often do, upon this; what The vanity of the a free and roving thing human judgment is. I ordinarily see that men, in things proposed to them, more willingly study to find out the reason than to find out the truth of them; they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant praters! the knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct of things, not us, who are only to undergo them, and who have the perfectly full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without penetrating into their origin and essence; wine is none the more pleasant to him that knows its first faculties. On the contrary, both the body and soul alter and interrupt the right they have of the use of the world and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning. Effects concern us, but the means not at all. To determine and to distribute appertain to superiority and command, as it does to subjection to accept. Let me reprehend our custom; we commonly begin thus: "How is such a thing done?" whereas, we should say: "Is such a thing done?" Our reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation. Let it run on; it builds as well in the air as on the earth; and with inanity as well as with matter : Dare pondus idonea fumo.2 "And can give weight to smoke.” 1 Roman Questions, c. 24. 2 Persius, v. 20 |