liberty, which Epaminondas denied to him, but granted it at the first

word to a wench of his, that made the same intercession; saying, that it

was a gratification fit for such a one as she, but not for a captain.

Sophocles being joint praetor with Pericles, seeing accidentally a fine

boy pass by: "O what a charming boy is that!" said he. "That might be

very well," answered Pericles, "for any other than a praetor, who ought

not only to have his hands, but his eyes, too, chaste."--[Cicero, De

Offic., i. 40.] AElius Verus, the emperor, answered his wife, who

reproached him with his love to other women, that he did it upon a

conscientious account, forasmuch as marriage was a name of honour and

dignity, not of wanton and lascivious desire; and our ecclesiastical

history preserves the memory of that woman in great veneration, who

parted from her husband because she would not comply with his indecent

and inordinate desires. In fine, there is no pleasure so just and

lawful, where intemperance and excess are not to be condemned.

But, to speak the truth, is not man a most miserable creature the while?

It is scarce, by his natural condition, in his power to taste one

pleasure pure and entire; and yet must he be contriving doctrines and

precepts to curtail that little he has; he is not yet wretched enough,

unless by art and study he augment his own misery:

"Fortunae miseras auximus arte vias."

["We artificially augment the wretchedness of fortune."

--Properitius, lib. iii. 7, 44.]

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent, when she exercises it in

rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are

naturally our due, as she employs it favourably and well in artificially

disguising and tricking out the ills of life, to alleviate the sense of

them. Had I ruled the roast, I should have taken another and more

natural course, which, to say the truth, is both commodious and holy, and

should, peradventure, have been able to have limited it too;

notwithstanding that both our spiritual and corporal physicians, as by

compact betwixt themselves, can find no other way to cure, nor other

remedy for the infirmities of the body and the soul, than by misery and

pain. To this end, watchings, fastings, hair-shirts, remote and solitary

banishments, perpetual imprisonments, whips and other afflictions, have

been introduced amongst men: but so, that they should carry a sting with

them, and be real afflictions indeed; and not fall out as it once did to

one Gallio, who having been sent an exile into the isle of Lesbos, news

was not long after brought to Rome, that he there lived as merry as the

day was long; and that what had been enjoined him for a penance, turned

to his pleasure and satisfaction: whereupon the Senate thought fit to

recall him home to his wife and family, and confine him to his own house,