"to be seen, and then most pernicious when they "lurk under a dissembled temper." the discove mestics. I admonish all who have authority to be angry in Rules to be my family, in the first place, to be sparing of their observed in anger, and not to lavish it upon every occasion; for ry of anger that both lessens the weight and hinders the effect against du of it. Loud exclamation is so customary that every one despises it; and, that your clamour at a servant for a theft is not minded, because it is no more than what he has seen you make a hundred times, against him, for having ill washed a glass, or misplaced a stool. Secondly, that they do not spend their breath in vain, but make sure that their reproof reach the person in fault; for ordinarily they are apt to bawl before he comes into their presence, and continue scolding an age after he is gone: Et secum petulans amentia certat.* And peevish madness with itself contends. They quarrel with their own shadows, and push the Mugitus veluti cum prima in prælia taurus As furious preludes to ensuing frays. * Claudian. in Eutrop. lib. i. ver. 237. The author's anger on great occasious. When I am angry, my anger is very sharp, but withal very short, and as private as possible; I am and little indeed hasty and violent, but never am beside myself, so that I throw out all manner of injurious words at random, and without choice, and never consider properly to dart my raillery where I think it will give the 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 ones; the latter surprise me; and the mischief of it is, that, when you are once upon the precipice, it is no matter who gives you the push, for you are sure to 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 warrantable indignation in me, and then I am proud of deceiving their expectation; against these I gird and prepare myself; they disturb my head, and threaten to crack my brain, should I give way to 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 ever so great; but if a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away, be the cause ever so small; which makes me thus indent with those who may contend with me, viz. when they see me first moved, let me alone, right or wrong, I will do the same for them. The storm is only begot by the concurrence of resentments, 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 practise. Sometimes also it falls out, that I put on a seeming anger, for the better governing of my family, 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, the more excuse and inclination I have to be so, although I have heretofore been 12 reckoned amongst those that have the greatest patience. proper to A word to conclude this chapter; Aristotle says, Whether "That anger sometimes serves to arm virtue and wrath is "valour." It is likely it may be so; nevertheless animate they who contradict him pleasantly answer, "That virtue and "it is a weapon of novel use; for we move other "arms, this moves us; our hands guide it not, it "is it that guides our hands; it holds us, we hold "not it." valour. CHAPTER XXIII. 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, which is wholly compiled of what I have borrowed from them, obliges me to stand up for their honour. tween Se of As to Seneca, amongst a million of pamphlets Comparithat those of the pretended reformed religion dis- son beperse abroad for the defence of their cause (and neca and which sometimes proceed from a pen so good, that the cardiit is pity it is not employed in a better subject), I Lorrain, formerly saw one, which, in order to draw a complete parallel between the government of our late poor king Charles the ninth and that of Nero, compares the late cardinal of Lorrain with Seneca, in their fortunes (as they were both of them prime ministers to their princes), in their manners, conditions, and departments, as having been very near alike. Herein I think he does the said lord cardinal a great honour; for though I am one of those who have a great esteem for his wit, eloquence, and zeal for religion, and for the service of his king, and The mali unfair cha racter gives of Seneca, trary to ported of citus. reckon it was his happiness to be born in an age wherein it was a thing so new, so rare, and also so necessary for the public weal, to have an ecclesiastical person of so high birth and dignity, and so sufficient and capable for his place; yet, to confess the truth, I do not think his capacity by many degrees equal to Seneca's, nor his virtue either so pure, entire, or steady. Now this book whereof I am speaking, to bring cious and about its design, gives a very injurious description of Seneca, by reproaches borrowed from Dion the which Dion historian, whose testimony I do not at all believe; for setting aside the inconsistency of this writer, quite con- who, after having called Seneca in one place very what is re- wise, and in another a mortal enemy to Nero's vices, him by Ta- makes him elsewhere avaricious, an usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a false pretender to philosophy. Seneca's virtue appears so lively and vigorous in his writings, and his vindication is so clear against any of these imputations, and particularly as to his riches and extraordinary expenses, that I cannot believe any testimony to the contrary. Besides, it is much more reasonable to believe the Roman historians in such things than the Greeks and foreigners. Now Tacitus and the others speak very honourably both of his life and death, and represent him to us as a very excellent and virtuous personage in all things. I will allege no other reproach against Dion's report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so crazy a judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Cæsar's cause against Pompey, and that of Anthony against Cicero. good au tarch, Bodinus, a Let us now come to Plutarch: John Bodinus is a thor, vili- good author of our time, and of much greater ties Plu- judgment than his cotemporary class of scribblers, whom so that he deserves to be carefully read and consiMontaigne dered. 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 vindicates. have let him alone, this not being a subject for me to speak to), but " That he oft writes things incre"dible and absolutely fabulous," which are his own words: if he had simply said, "That he writes "things otherwise than they really are," it had been no great reproach; for what we have not seen we receive from other hands, and take upon trust; and I see that sometimes he purposely relates the same story in a different manner; as the judgment of the three best captains that ever were formed by Hannibal, which is given otherwise in the life of Flaminius, and another way in that of Pyrrhus; but to charge him with having believed things incredible and impossible, is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want of discernment. And this is his example: "As," says he, "when he re- The bowels "lates that a Lacedæmonian boy suffered his bowels dæmonian to be torn out by a fox-cub which he had stolen, boy torn "and kept it concealed under his coat, till he fell fox-cub. "down dead, rather than he would discover his Whether it "theft."* In the first place, I find this example ill surd and chosen, forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the ef- incredible forts of the faculties of the soul, whereas we have better authority to limit and know the strength of the body; and therefore, had I been in his place, I should rather have chosen an example of this second sort; and there are some that are incredible ; amongst others, that which he relates of Pyrrhus, "That all over wounded as he was, he struck one "of his enemies, who was armed from head to foot, 66 so great a blow with his sword, that he clave him "down from his crown to his seat, whereby the 66 body was divided into two parts." In this example I find no great miracle; nor do I admit of the excuse he makes for Plutarch, by his having added the words "as it is said," by way of caution to suspend our belief; for, unless it be in things re *In the Life of Lycurgus, chap. 14 of Amyot's translation. In the Life of Pyrrhus, cap. 12. of a Lace out by a be an ab story? |