4

gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince; the groom, the gentleman, and the lord, are as much servants one as the other; the circumstantial difference of the one's getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter, than the difference between a plain, a rich, and gaudy livery, I do not say, that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand, is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both, who can live contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this dependence upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power:

Amatorem trecentæ

Pirithoum cohibent catenæ.*

:

Let us begin with him by break of day for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred suitors; and the hall and antichambers (all the out-works) possessed by the enemy: as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards, for entrance. This is so essential a part of greatness, that whosoever is without it, looks like a fallen favourite, like a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he pleases all the morning. There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to have their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their toach. Now I would fain

Hor. 3. Od. iv. 79.

know which is the worst duty, that of any one particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or the great man's, who waits every day to speak with all company.

Aliena negotia centum

Per caput, et circa saliunt latus

A hundred businesses of other men (many unjust, and most impertinent) fly continually about his head and ears, and strike him in the face like Dorres. Let us contemplate him a little at another special scene of glory, and that is, his table. Here he seems to be the lord of all nature: the earth affords him her best metals for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his food; the air and sea supply him with their choicest birds and fishes; and a great many men, who look like masters, attend upon him; and yet, when all this is done, even all this is but table d'hôte; it is crowded with people for whom he cares not, with many parasites and some spies, with the most burdensome sort of guests, the endeavourers to be witty.†

But every body pays him great respect; and every body commends his meat, that is, his money; every body admires the exquisite dressing and ordering of it, that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook; every body loves his hospitality, that is, his vanity. But I desire to know why the honest innkeeper, who provides a public table for his profit,

Hor. 2. Sat. vi. 34.

-the endeavourers to be witty] Justly observed, and well expressed; for true wit comes of itself, without any endeavour.-Hurd.

should be but of a mean profession; and he, who does it for his honour, a munificent prince. You will say, because one sells, and the other gives : nay, both sell, though for different things; the one for plain money, the other for I know not what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy. If then his table be made a snare (as the Scripture * speaks) to his liberty, where can he hope for freedom? There is always, and every where, some restraint upon him. He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities. The half hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, the superlative at the door; and, if the person be pan huper sebastus, there is a hyper-superlative ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans, as are to the sea, "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further."+

Perditur hæc inter misero lux.

Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.

How many impertinent letters and visits must he receive, and sometimes answer both too as impertinently! He never sets his foot beyond his threshold, unless, like a funeral, he have a train to follow him; as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir, till the bearers were all ready. "My life," says Horace, speaking to one of these magnificos) is a

Ps. Ixix. 22.

† Job xxxviii. 11. Hor. 2 Sat. vi. 59.

great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market, and cheapen what I please, without being wondered at; and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum, without being missed." It is an unpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation and censure of others; as there may be vanity in it, so methinks there should be vexation, too, of spirit: and I wonder how princes can endure to have two or three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater and more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants; but even this too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will be a servant to them (as many men are,) the trouble and care of yours in the government of them all is much more than that of every one of them in their observance of you. I take the profession of a schoolmaster to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a commonwealth; yet certainly all his fasces and tyrannical authority over so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs.

I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of greatness: I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger, hatred, jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the et cætera of their passions, which are the secret, but constant tyrants and torturers of their life, I omit here, because, though they be symptoms most frequent and violent in this disease, yet they are common too in some degree to the epidemical disease of life itself.

But the ambitious man, though he be so many

ways a slave (o toties servus!) yet he bears it bravely and heroically; he struts and looks big upon the stage; he thinks himself a real prince in his masking-habit, and deceives too all the foolish part of his spectators: he is a slave in Saturnalibus. The covetous man is a downright servant, a draughthorse without bells or feathers; ad metalla damnatus, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he knows not whom: "He heapeth up riches, and knows not who shall enjoy them;"* it is only sure, that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an indigent needy slave; he will hardly allow himself clothes and board-wages:

Unciatim vix de demenso suo,

Suum defraudans genium, comparsit miser.t

He defrauds not only other men, but his own genius; he cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man's sight, as well as judgment.

It seems a more difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man too is but a servant: what can be more the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to follow nothing but his own pleasures? Why, I will tell you who is that true freeman, and that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows all his pleasures (the very name of follower is servile); but he who rationally

Ps. xxxix. 6.

Phorm. Act. I. Sc. i. ver. 43.