with old

If we must study, let us follow that study which is What study suitable to our present condition, that we may be suits best able to answer as he did; who, being asked, "To age. "what end he studied in his decrepid age?" "That "I may go the better off the stage," said he, " and "at greater ease." Such a study was that of the younger Cato, at feeling his end approach, when he was reading Plato's discourse of the "Immortality "of the soul:" not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before furnished with all sorts of provision for such a departure; for, of assurance, an established will and instruction he had, more than Plato had in all his writings; his knowledge and courage were, in this respect, above philosophy. He employed himself thus, not for the service of his death, but as a man whose sleep is not once disturbed in the im portance of such a deliberation; he also, without choice and change, continued his studies with the other customary actions of his life. The night that he was denied the prætorship he spent in play: that wherein he was to die he spent in reading: the loss either of life, or of office, was all one to him.

CHAPTER XX.

Of Virtue.

to a capa

dily and

I FIND, by experience, that there is a vast differ- Man selence between the starts and sallies of the mind, and dom attains a resolute and constant habit; and very well per- city of ceive, there is nothing we may not do, nay, even to acting stea the surpassing the divinity itself, says a certain per- regularly, son, forasmuch as it is more for a man to render him- according self impassible or dispassionate, than to be such by his ciples of original condition; and even to be able to conjoin to tue.

to the prin

solid vir

Pyrrho tried, in vain, to conform

his life to bis doctine.

man's imbecility and frailty a godly resolution and
assurance. But this is by fits and starts; and, in
the lives of those heroes of times past, there are some-
times miraculous sallies, and such as seem infinitely
to exceed our natural strength; but they are indeed
sallies; and it is hard to believe, that these so ele-
vated qualities can be so thoroughly imprinted on the
mind, that they should become common, and, as it
were, natural to it; it accidentally happens, even to
us, who are the most imperfect of men, that some-
times our mind gives a spring, when roused by the
discourses or examples of others, much beyond
its ordinary stretch; but it is a kind of passion,
which pushes and pricks it on, and, in some sort, ra-
vishes it from itself: but, this whirlwind once blown
over, we see, that it insensibly flags and slackens it-
self, if not to the lowest degree, at least so as to be
no more the same; insomuch as that, upon every
trivial occasion, the losing of a bird, or the breaking
of a glass, we suffer ourselves to be moved little less
than one of the common people. I am of opinion,
that, order, moderation, and constancy excepted, all
things are to be done by a man that is, in general,
"Therefore," say
very deficient.
the sages,
"order to make a right judgment of a man, you are
"chiefly to pry into his common actions, and sur-
"prise him in his every-day habit."

❝ in

Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a system of knowledge upon ignorance, endeavoured, as all the rest, who were really philosophers, did, to make his life correspond with his doctrine: and because he maintained the imbecility of human judgment to be so extreme, as to be incapable of any choice or inclination, and would have it perpetually wavering and suspending, considering and receiving all things as indifferent, it is said, "That he always comported "himself after the same manner and countenance:*

12

* Diog. Laert. in Pyrrho's Life, lib. ix. sect. 63.

*

if he had begun a discourse, he would always end "what he had to say, though the person he was speaking to was gone away and, if he walked, he "never turned out of his way for any impediment, being preserved from precipices, the jostle of carts, "and other like accidents, by the care of his friends; "for to fear, or to avoid any thing, had been to con"tradict his own propositions, which deprived the "senses themselves of all certainty and choice: "sometimes he suffered incisions and cauteries with

66

so great constancy, as never to be seen so much "as to wink his eyes." It is something to bring the soul to these imaginations; more to join the effects to it, and yet not impossible; but to conjoin them with such perseverance and constancy as to make them habitual, is certainly, in attempts so remote from the common usance, almost incredible to be done. Therefore it was, "That being, one day, "found at his house terribly scolding at his sister, "and being reproached that he therein transgressed "his own rules of indifference: What,' said he, "must this foolish woman also serve for a testimony "to my rules?' rules?' Another time, being to defend "himself against a dog: It is' said he, very hard totally to put off man; and we must endeavour "and force ourselves to encounter things, first by "effects, but at the worst by reason and argument.'

nary no

sudden re

About seven or eight years since, a countryman, Extraordiyet living at a village but two leagues from my house, tions prohaving been long tormented with his wife's jealousy, duced by a coming, one day, home from his work, and she wel- solution. coming him with her accustomed railing, he entered into so great a fury, "That, with a sickle he had yet in his hand, he totally cut off all those parts "that she was jealous of, and threw them in her "face." And, it is said, "That a young gentle

* Yet Montaigne says, in the 3d chapter of this volume, that they who represent Pyrrho in this light, extend his doctrine beyond what it really was; and that, like a rational man, he made use of all his corporeal and spiritual faculties as rule and reason.

A woman

ed herself

man of our nation, brisk and amorous, having, by "his perseverance, at last mollified the heart of a fair "mistress, enraged, that, upon the point of fruition, "he found himself unable to perform, and that,

Non viriliter

Iners senile penis extulit capul,*

so soon as ever he came home he deprived himself "of it, and sent it to his mistress; a cruel and bloody victim for the expiation of his offence." If this had been done upon a mature consideration, and upon the account of religion, as the priests of Cybele did, what should we have said of so choleric an action?

"A few days since, at Bergerac, within five leagues thatdrown. of my house, up the river Dordogne, a woman for being "having, over-night, been abused and beaten by her beat by her <6 husband, a peevish ill-natured fellow, resolved to

husband.

Voluntary death of

the Indian wives.

"escape from his ill usage at the hazard of her life; "and going, so soon as she was up the next morning, "to visit her neighbours, as she was wont to do, she "dropped a hint of the recommendation of her affairs, "she took a sister of her's by the hand, led her to a "bridge, and after having taken leave of her, as it "were in jest, without any manner of alteration or

66

change in her countenance, she threw herself headlong into the river, and was there drowned. That "which is the most remarkable, is, that this resolu"tion was a whole night forming in her head."

But it is quite another thing with the Indian women; for it being the custom there for the men to have many wives, and for the best beloved of them to kill herself at her husband's decease, every one of them makes it the business of her whole life to obtain this privilege, and gain this advantage over her companions; and the good offices they do their husbands, aim at no other recompence, but to be pre"ferred in accompanying them in death."

Tib. lib. iv. eleg. Pen. ad Priapum in veterum Poet. Catalectis.

Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto,
Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis:
Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur
Conjugium, pudor est non licuisse mori,
Ardent victrices, et flammæ pectora præbent,
Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris.*

When to the pile they throw the kindling brand,
The pious wives with hair dishevell❜d stand,
Striving which living shall in death attend
Her spouse, and gain an honourable end;

Those thus preferr'd, their breasts to flame expose,
And their scorch'd lips to their dead husband's close.

A certain author, of our times, reports, that he has seen this custom in those oriental nations, that not only the wives bury themselves with their husbands, but even the slaves he has enjoyed also; which is done after this manner : "The husband being "dead, the widow may, if she will (but few do it), "demand two or three months to order her affairs. "The day being come, she mounts on horseback, "dressed as fine as at her wedding, and, with a "cheerful countenance, says she is going to sleep "with her spouse, holding a looking-glass in her " left-hand, and an arrow in the other. Being thus "conducted in pomp, accompanied with her kin "dred and friends, and a great concourse of people, "with great joy, she is at last brought to the pub"lic place appointed for such spectacles: this is a "spacious place, in the midst of which is a pit full of "wood, and, adjoining to it, a mount raised four or "five steps, to which she is led, and served with a "magnificent repast; which being done, she falls "to dancing and singing, and gives order when she "thinks fit, to kindle the fire; which being per"formed, she descends, and, taking the nearest of "her husband's relations by the hand, they walk "together to the river close by, where she strips " herself stark naked, and, having distributed her "clothes and jewels to her friends, plunges herself

• Propert. lib. iii. eleg. 13, ver. 17, &c.