orator. I myself have often met with that tempta tion to vanity (if it were any); but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run 'faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner, as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard

of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known, or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that: whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, "This is that Bucephalus," or, 66 This is that Incitatus," when they were led prancing

through the streets, as, "This is that Alexander," or "This is that Domitian;" and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.

I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it acccompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man, whilst he lives: what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us.* Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little comImerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences

-come back to inform us.] He means, to inform us, whether posthumous fame contributes to make men happier in another life. He knew that honesty would turn to account there; but doubted whether the glory reflected from it on a good man's memory, would be any ingredient in his future happiness. This doctrine, he calls a philosophy merely notional and conjectural; not the doctrine of a future state, which no man believed with more assurance.— Hurd.

of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit): this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this "muta persona," I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise; nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.

SENECA, EX THYESTE, ACT. II. CHOR.

"Stet quicumque volet potens

Aulæ culmine lubrico;

Me dulcis saturet quies.
Obscuro positus loco,
Leni perfruar otio.
Nullis nota Quiritibus
Ætas per tacitum fluat.
Sic cum transierint mei
Nullo cum strepitu dies,
Plebeius moriar senex.
Illi mors gravis incubat,
Qui, notus nimis omnibus,
Ignotus moritur sibi.”

Upon the slippery tops of human state,
The gilded pinnacles of fate,

Let others proudly stand, and, for a while
The giddy danger to beguile,

With joy, and with disdain, look down on all,
Till their heads turn, and down they fall.
Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near
That I no fall to earth may fear,
And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat
From the long ruins of the great.*

From the long ruins of the great.] A wonderfully fine

Here, wrapp'd in the arms of Quiet let me lie;
Quiet, companion of obscurity.

Here let my life with as much silence slide,
As time, that measures it, does glide.
Nor let the breath of infamy or fame,
From town to town echo about my name.
Nor let my homely death embroider'd be
With scutcheon or with elegy.

An old plebeian let me die;
Alas, all then are such as well as I.

To him, alas, to him, I fear,

The face of death will terrible appear;
Who, in his life flattering his senseless pride,
By being known to all the world beside,
Does not himself, when he is dying, know,
Nor what he is, nor whither he's to go.

IV. OF AGRICULTURE.

THE first wish of Virgil (as you will find anon by his verses) was to be a good philosopher; the second, a good husbandman: and God (whom he seemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him just as he did

line, of which there is no trace in the original. It may be taken in two senses, and was probably intended to express them both namely, the oppressive nature of greatness while it stands, and the extensive mischiefs which attend its fall. For one of the patrician trees (to speak in the language of the author) not only chills the neighbouring plants by its outstretched umbrage, so long as it continues in a flourishing state; but, when time, or some tempest of fortune, overturns it, involves the plebeian underwood, to a great distance, in its ruin

-" ingentem traxêre ruinam."-Hurd.

with Solomon; because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, he added all things else, which were subordinately to be desired. He made him one of the best philosophers, and best husbandmen; and, to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the best poet he made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who desired to be no richer

"O fortunatus nimium, et bona qui sua novit !"

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

But, since nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we can make, are the employments of a country life. It is, as Columella* calls it, "Res sine dubitatione proxima, et quasi consanguinea sapientiæ,” the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred, to philosophy. Varro says, the principles of it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature; earth, water, air, and the sun. It does certainly comprehend more parts of philosophy, than any one profession, art, or science, in the world besides: and therefore Cicero says, the pleasures of a husbandman "mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur accedere," come very nigh to those of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist: the utility of it + De Senectute.

Lib. I. c. i.