stand me, and so does Talleyrand. It is thus I should 'be served. Others are too prompt. They leave me no time for reflection.' CXXXVI. SIC VOS NON VOBIS. 'Silk-worms-busy at their looms, Do make their webs both winding-sheets and tombs; Peacham's Emblems. YESTERDAY I saw a copy of Domenichino's Communion of St. Jerome, which Nicholas Poussin compared to the Transfiguration of Raphael. This copy sold for fifty pounds; while the original brought Domenichino not more than fifty crowns! The man that reaps, not only receives wages, but a harvest feast; while he who sowed the corn has, probably, not a sheaf to sit upon. The best men reward thus; even those who would remind us of Salvator's picture of Pythagoras, paying the fisherman for leave to emancipate the fish he had caught. 'As a dog, that turns the spit, To clink the wheel; but all in vain; Where at his setting out he was.' This passage from Butler gave, perhaps, an amusing hint to Prior: A squirrel spent his little rage The cage, as either side turn'd up, Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes, But here and there, turn wood and wire, How calmly some men, and even some women, look on while others are starving! They have not laboured ' in our vineyard,' say they; and therefore need not 'be paid.' Yet they bore all the heat and burthen of the day. They taught others in what manner to cut the stalks from the vines, to throw them into the baskets, to cast them into the vats, to express the juice, to put it into casks, and roll it into their cellars. The reward ?The pleasure of seeing with what ease and grace the lookers-on pour the wine into their goblets, put it to their lips, and drink it deliciously up! It must ever be conceded, that it is a pre-eminent hardship that the hard-wrought earnings of men of large families, and of small means, should be compelled to contribute to the superfluities of the lazy; who, instead of being grateful for the service, stare God, as it were, in the face, and regard the persons who support them with impertinent disdain. Were not the hope of immortality firmly planted in the mind, we should sometimes inquire, perhaps with indignation, why some are fated to enjoy unmerited favour, and others to endure unmerited disgrace. 6 Solomon says, 6 a like event happeneth to all; the ' good and the bad;' and Lucretius records, in his description of the plague, that those who died soonest were the most worthy. Thou art an infidel,' said the sailors to Diagoras; our taking thee on board has 'been the cause of this storm. The gods are angry ' with us.' 'Look at those ships,' replied Diagoras ; they are in as great danger as we are. Am I aboard ' of them too?' CXXXVII. WHO ASK ADVICE AFTER THEY HAVE ACTED. SOME persons ask advice after the deed is performed on which they desire an opinion; others have great tact in sounding their ministers, friends, or solicitors, on subjects on which they have already determined to act. Guicciardini* accuses Pope Clement VII. of having always considered that advice the best, which he had neglected. To ask advice of a friend, after we have acted, is an unwarrantable liberty. Most persons are very saucy about advice. They remember, I suppose, the opinion of Lord Shaftesbury, that asking advice is only giving another man an oppor * Lib. xvi. It tunity of showing his vanity and wisdom, and of raising himself in his own esteem by our defects. Such is, assuredly, sometimes the case. But advice from a competent person is of more value than gold itself. preserves the state. Were I capable of giving advice, I must respect a man much before I would give it ; from others I should almost demand the fee of a hundred guineas. Not for the value; but because men succeed, or guard against evils, by their own advice; and fail, or fall, only by the advice of friends! Ask advice, and follow your own. That is, your own, after you have heard what your friend has to advise. This is wisdom; but do not follow your own because it is your own, nor his because it is his. In respect to seeking advice from relatives, there are two passages I have somewhere read, which I shall combine into one short paragraph. Relatives are not only irksome in adversity, but insupportable; since they abound so much in reproach and advice, and so little in essential assistance. If strangers cannot help us in their purses, they will, at least, not insult us with their tongues. CXXXVIII. WHO GIVE REASONS FOR ALL THEY DO. SOME Sovereigns delight in doing just what they desire, and giving no reasons, bad or good, for that which may be done. Queen Elizabeth, however, was not of this order. Hence it was the maxim of her reign, that every great transaction should have the colour of law; and that whenever any extraordinary measure was undertaken, the motives to it were so far from being kept secret, that the queen took especial care the world should be acquainted with them ;-to prevent false ru mours. This is an excellent custom and regulation, if true motives are given; but a very insidious one, if false ones: the wisdom of the record depending entirely on the truth; the most lasting of tyrannies being that of unwise laws. CXXXIX. WHO CAN PERCEIVE THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN ARGUMENT, BUT NOT OF AN ACTION. SOME can perceive, at one slight glance, all the deductions and consequences of an argument; and yet not the deductions and consequences of a circumstance :-being, as it were, more acquainted with Aristotle's categories than with Aristotle's rhetoric. We may apply this to Pope Sixtus IV.; for when he excommunicated the magistrates of Florence, who had hung an archbishop and imprisoned a cardinal, at whose instance the former had engaged in a conspiracy against. the family of Medici, he neutralized his anathema by including in it the clergy of the Florentine States;— persons who had nothing whatever to do in the transaction. The clergy, in return, published an anathema against the Pope; and, associating themselves more intimately with the citizens, the effect and consequences. |