3.

Let all the world slave to this tyrant be,
Creature to this disguised deity,

Yet it shall never conquer me.

A guard of virtues will not let it pass,
And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass.
The Muse's laurel, round my temples spread,
Does from this lightning's force secure my head.
Nor will I lift it up so high,

As in the violent meteor's way to lie.

Wealth for its power do we honour and adore ? The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more.

4.

From towns and courts, camps of the rich and great, The vast Xerxean army, I retreat,

And to the small Laconic forces fly,

Which hold the straights of poverty.
Cellars and granaries in vain we fill,
With all the summer's store,

If the mind thirst and hunger still:

The poor rich man's emphatically poor. Slaves to the things we too much prize, We masters grow of all that we despise.

5.

A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,

Is all the wealth by nature understood. The monarch, on whom fertile Nile bestows All which that grateful earth can bear, Deceives himself, if he suppose

That more than this falls to his share.

Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the lord;

But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Exacted from it by the tyrant lust.

Much will always wanting be,

To him who much desires. Thrice happy he To whom the wise indulgency of heaven,

With sparing hand, but just enough has given.

VIII.

THE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN IN

MUCH COMPANY.

IF twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves, who are all furnished cap à pié, with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offensive, too, of craft and malice. He will find no less odds than this against him, if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice therefore which I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numerous

enemy.

an

The truth of it is, that a man in much business must either make himself a knave, or else the world will make him a fool: and, if the injury went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation; but the case

is much worse, for these civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about such a taken stranger, but at last devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out of drunken company, though they be never so kind and merry among themselves; it is not unpleasant only, but dangerous to him.

:

Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwise; he is so, when he is among ten thousand neither is the solitude so uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilest, methinks, of all nations, are those, whom we account the most barbarous; there is some moderation and good-nature in the Toupinambaltians, who eat no men but their enemies, whilst we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks, prey upon every thing that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed, united them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I wish, they could unravel all they had woven; that we might have our woods and our innocence again, instead of our castles and our policies. They have assembled many thousands of scattered people into one body it is true, they have done so; they have

:

brought them into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder one another: they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures; they have made them hunters and fishers of their brethren; they boast to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the truth is, they have only taught them an art of war; they have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first that devil, which now they conjure and cannot bind; though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there was less committed, because there were no rewards for it.

But the men, who praise philosophy from this topic, are much deceived; let oratory answer for itself, the tinkling perhaps of that may unite a swarm: it never was the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them, when they were assembled; to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity again. Avarice and ambition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire; they said,. Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world? what was it, but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary of criminals? It was justly named by the augury of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood of his brother.