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two of which were beautiful, very differently, but in the same degree: the other was much less so. The least of the three, at the first glance, I recognised to be Love, although I saw no wings, nor arrows, nor quiver, nor torch, nor emblem of any kind designating his attributes. The next was not Venus, nor a Grace, nor a Nymph, nor Goddess of whom in worship or meditation I had ever conceived an idea; and yet my heart persuaded me she was a Goddess, and from the manner in which she spoke to Love, and he again to her, I was convinced she must be. Quietly and unmovedly as she was standing, her figure I perceived was adapted to the perfection of activity. With all the succulence and suppleness of early youth, scarcely beyond puberty, it however gave me the idea, from its graceful and easy langour, of its being possessed by a fondness for repose. Her eyes were large and serene, not of a quality to exhibit the intensity of thought, or even the habitude of reflexion, nor capable of expressing the plenitude of joy; and her countenance was tinged with so delicate a colour, that it appeared an affluence from an irradiated cloud, passing over it in the heavens.

358. PIRATES-HOW TO BE REGARDED. It was never doubted but a war upon pirates may be lawfully made by any nation, though not invested or violated by them. Is it because they have not certas sedes, or lares? In the piratical war, which was achieved by Pompey the great, and was his truest and greatest glory; the pirates had some cities, sundry ports, and a great part of the province of Cilicia; and the pirates now being have a receptacle and mansion in Algiers. Beasts are not the less savage because they have dens. Is it because the danger hovers as a cloud, that a man cannot tell where it will fall? And so it is every man's case. The reason is good, but it is not all, nor that which is most alleged. For the true received reason is, that pirates are communes humani generis hostes; whom all nations are to prosecute, not so much on the right of their own fears, as upon the band of human society. For as there are formal and written leagues, respective to certain enemies; so is there a natural and tacit confederation amongst all men, against the common enemy of human society. So as there needs no intimation or denunciation of the war; there needs no request from the nation grieved; but all these formalities the law of

nature supplies in the case of pirates. The same is the case of rovers by land; such as yet are some cantons in Arabia, and some petty kings of the mountains, adjacent to straits

and ways.

LORD BACON

SOCRATES AND ARISTOPHANES.

I have often ob

359. served a passage in Socrates's behaviour at his death, in a light wherein none of the critics have considered it. That excellent man entertaining his friends, a little before he drank the bowl of poison, with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at his entering upon it, says, that he does not believe any the most comic genius can censure him for talking upon such a subject at such a time. This passage, I think, evidently glances upon Aristophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the discourses of that divine philosopher. It has been observed by many writers, that Socrates was so little moved at this piece of buffoonery, that he was several times present at its being acted upon the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of it. But, with submission, I think the remark I have here made shews us, that this unworthy treatment made an impression upon his mind, though he had been too wise to discover it. J. ADDISON

360. PITT'S CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE WAR. There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he was called to act in. His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great: an unnatural, as it should seem, not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard in conversation the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest, 'that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace.' As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without mature deliberation; not a deliberation lengthening out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as fully and as extensively con

sidered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war.

No

thing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.

E. BURKE

361. KING CHARLES THE SECOND. Such as would not flee were tormented in the bishops' courts, fined, whipped, pilloried, imprisoned, and suffered to enjoy no rest, so that death was better than life to them; and notwithstanding their patient sufferance of all these things, yet was not the king satisfied till the whole land was reduced to perfect slavery. The example of the French king was propounded to him, and he thought himself no monarch so long as his will was confined to the bounds of any law; but knowing that the people of England were not pliable to an arbitrary rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke by a foreign force, and till he could effect it, made no conscience of granting anything to the people, which he resolved should not oblige him longer than it served his turn; for he was a prince that had nothing of faith or truth, justice or generosity, in him.

I. HUTCHINSON.

The mas

362. CHARACTER OF LEWIS XIV OF FRANCE. culine beauty of his person was embellished with a noble air; the dignity of his behaviour was tempered with affability and politeness: elegant without effeminacy, addicted to pleasure without neglecting business, decent in his very vices, and beloved in the midst of arbitrary power, he surpassed all contemporary monarchs, as in grandeur, so likewise in fame and glory. His ambition, regulated by prudence, not by justice, had carefully provided every means of conquest; and before he put himself in motion, he seemed to have absolutely ensured success. His finances were brought into order: a naval power created: his armies increased and disciplined: magazines and military stores provided: and though the magnificence of his court was supported beyond all former example, so regular was the economy observed, and so willingly did the people, now enriched by arts and commerce, submit to multiplied taxes, that his military force much exceeded what in any preceding age had ever been employed by any European monarch.

D. HUME

363. I WAS glad to hear from the hon. gentleman that this is the parliament of England, and not of France. But I think we have at least made this discovery from the speech of the hon. gentleman, that if this be the Parliament of England, and not of France, at any rate France is not unrepresented in our body. Suspicions may have been previously entertained throughout England as to the reasons which have induced the hon. gentleman to shew such marked attachment and to profess such unwonted affection for certain treaties and engagements which formed the subject of discussion in this House; but we now know that there is no price which the hon. gentleman is not willing to pay rather than these objects, to which he attaches so much importance, should fail of being carried into effect. The hon. gentleman I hope does not speak the sentiments of Her Majesty's Government on this question. Certain I am that he does not speak the sentiments of the people of England. We now know the measure and bounds of the loyalty of the hon. gentleman-he gets fourpence where he used to get twopence, and he does not hesitate to tell us that transfers his loyalty and his allegiance. For great as is the opinion which the hon. gentleman undoubtedly entertains of himself, I do not attribute to him such overweening vanity as to suppose that when he said there were great classes who would not hesitate to transfer their loyalty if their incomes were doubled, he meant that he himself was above such considerations. He spoke, I doubt not, from an intimate knowledge of his own heart and sentiments; and there I leave the hon. gentleman.

364. TREASURE IN WAR. Like as in wrestling between man and man, if there be a great overmatch in strength, it is to little purpose though one have the better breath; but if the strength be near equal, then he that iş shorter winded will, if the wager consists of many falls, in the end have the worst ; so it is in the wars, if it be a match between a valiant people and a cowardly, the advantage of treasure will not serve; but if they be near in valour, then the better monied state will be the better able to continue the war, and so in the end to prevail. But if any man think that money can make those provisions at the first encounters, that no difference of valour can countervail, let him look back but into those examples which have been brought, and he must confess, that all those furnitures

whatsoever are but shews and mummeries, and cannot shrowd fear against resolution. For there shall he find companies armed with armour of proof taken out of the stately armories of kings who spared no cost, overthrown by men armed by private bargain and chance as they could get it; there shall he find armies appointed with horses bred of purpose and in choice races, chariots of war, elephants and the like terrors, mastered by armies meanly appointed.

365. MEASURE PERFECTETH ALL THINGS. All things are in such sort divided into finite and infinite, that no one substance, nature or quality, can be possibly capable of both. The world and all things in the world are stinted, all effects that proceed from them, all the powers and abilities whereby they work, whatsoever they do, whatsoever they may, and whatsoever they are, is limited. Which limitations of each creature is both the perfection and also the preservation thereof. Measure is that which perfecteth all things, because everything is for some end, neither can that thing be available to any end which is not proportionable thereunto, and to proportion as well excesses as defects are opposite. Again, forasmuch as nothing doth perish but only through excess or defect of that, the due proportioned measure whereof doth give perfection, it followeth that measure is likewise the preservation of all things.

R. HOOKER

366. HISTORY. Nestor, who lived three ages, was accounted the wisest man in the world. But the historian may make himself wise, by living as many ages as have passed since the beginning of the world. His books enable him to maintain discourse, who besides the stock of his own experience may spend on the common purse of his reading. This directs him in his life, so that he makes the shipwrecks of others sea-marks to himself; yea, accidents which others start from for their strangeness, he welcomes as his wonted acquaintance, having found precedents for them formerly. Without history a man's soul is purblind, seeing only the things which almost touch his eyes.

T. FULLER

367. PRACTICAL AND SPECULATIVE ATHEISM. A man may deny the Being of God in Words, only for Argument and Discourse sake, or out of Levity and Vanity of Humour, to

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