Stoical and Epicurean, more remote from the common use, but in my opinion more individually commodious and more firm. Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperors of his time, and only seems; for I take it for certain that he speaks against his judgment when he condemns the action of the generous murderers of Cæsar. Plutarch is frank throughout; Seneca abounds with brisk touches and sallies, Plutarch with things that heat and move you more: this contents and pays you better; he guides us, the other pushes us on.

As to Cicero, those of his works that are most useful to my design are they that treat of philosophy, especially moral. But boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, off with the bridle), his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest part of his work; whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him,—which is a great deal for me,and try to recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, and to the reasons that properly help to form the knot I seek. For me, who only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical and Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would have a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what death and pleasure are: let no man give himself the trouble to anatomize them for me. I look for good and solid reasons, at the first dash, to instruct me how to stand their shock; for which purpose neither grammatical subtleties nor the quaint contexture of words are argumentations of any use at all. I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the redoubt: his languish about the subject; they are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, -time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design to gain over, right or wrong; to children and common people, to whom a man must say all, and see what will come of it. I would not have an author make it his business to render me attentive. I come already fully prepared from my chamber.

I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce;

I eat the meat raw, so that instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, they tire and pall it. Will the license of the time excuse my sacrilegious boldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and heavy, too much stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a man who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needless preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me, in that I understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language. I generally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead to them.

The historians are my right ball: for they are pleasant and easy, and where man in general, the knowledge of whom I hunt after, appears more vividly and entire than anywhere else: the variety and truth of his internal qualities in gross and piecemeal, the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist more upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within than upon what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. Cæsar, in my opinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the knowledge of the history only, but for himself, so great an excellence and perfection he has above all the rest, though Sallust be one of the number. In earnest I read this author with more reverence and respect than is usually allowed to human writings: one while considering him in his person, by his actions and miraculous greatness, and another in the purity and inimitable polish of his language, wherein he not only excels all other historians, as Cicero confesses, but peradventure even Cicero himself; speaking of his enemies with so much sincerity in his judgment, that (the false colors with which he strives to palliate his evil cause, and the ordure of his pestilent ambition, excepted) I think there is no fault to be objected against him, saving this, that he speaks too sparingly of himself,-seeing so many great things could not have been performed under his conduct, but that his own. personal acts must necessarily have had a greater share in them than he attributes to them.

Translation of William Carew Hazlitt.

O

OF REPENTANCE

From the Essays'

THERS form man: I only report him; and represent a particular one, ill fashioned enough, and whom, if I had to model him anew, I should certainly make something else than what he is: but that's past recalling. Now, though the features of my picture alter and change, 'tis not, however, unlike: the world eternally turns round; all things therein are incessantly moving, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, and the Pyramids of Egypt, both by the public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is no other but a slower and more languishing motion. I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay but resolve; but it is always learning and making trial.

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre; 'tis all one: all moral philosophy may as well be applied to a common and private life, as to one of richer composition; every man carries the entire form of human condition. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some especial and extrinsic mark: I, the first of any, by my universal being; as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find so much as think of themselves.

fault that they do not . . I have this, at least, according to discipline, that never any man treated of a subject. he better understood and knew, than I what I have undertaken, and that in this I am the most understanding man alive: secondly, that never any man penetrated farther into his matter, nor better and more distinctly sifted the parts and sequences of it, nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he proposed to himself. To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to the work; and that is there, and the most pure and sincere that is anywhere to be found. I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare: and I dare a little the more, as I grow older; for methinks custom allows to age more liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self. . My book and I go hand in hand together. Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work, without reference to the workman; here they cannot: who touches the one, touches the other.

I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus

much from the public approbation, as to make men of understanding perceive that I was capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I deserved to have been assisted by a better memory.

Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent, and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not as the conscience of an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man; always adding this clause,—not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission,- that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely and simply referring myself to the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach, I only relate.

Translation of William Carew Hazlitt.