me, in distinguishing what I owe my friend, and what to mankind in general; than pretend to fhew me how many ways a man may be faid to be a friend; and to what different senses the word man may be applied. Lo! wisdom and folly take different paths: on which do I attend ? or which do you recommend to me? Wisdom looks upon man as a common friend: Folly regards not a friend in man. The former (the Stoic) designs a friend for himself; the latter (the Epicurean) himself for a friend: (i. e. referring all things to himself alone.) You are apt, Lucilius, to wreft the meaning of words; and amufe yourself in the arrangement of fyllables: indeed, unless I contrive the moft artful questions, and by a false conclufion built upon true premises, affirm a lye, I can scarce separate what is to be followed, from what is to be efchewed: I am really afhamed, that, old as we are, we should thus trifle in ferious affairs Moufe is a fyllable, But a mouse gnaws cheese; Therefore, a fyllable gnaws cheese. Suppofe now I was not master enough of logic to find out the fallacy of this fyllogifm, how dangerous would be my ignorance? what inconvenience would arife therefrom? Surely, I ought to be afraid, lest I should catch fyllables in my mousetrap; or, were I not to take more care, left a book should eat my cheese. But perhaps the following syllogifm is more acute and better formed: Mouse is a syllable; But a fyllable does not gnaw cheese : Therefore a mouse does not gnaw cheese. What childish trifling! Is this the effect of all our gravity! Does our beard grow for this? Does all our labour and study tend to teach fuch wretched stuff, with a grim and melancholy vifage? Would you know what true philofophy promiseth all mankind? I will tell you, good counfel. We fee one man struggling in the jaws of death; another rack'd by poverty; another is tortured by riches, either his own or his neighbour's: one man dreads bad fortune, another is diffatisfied with good; one thinks himself hardly used by man, another by you turn ho by the gods feeing all this, why do you offer me fuch filly trifles as the abovementioned? Here is no room for jefting; you are called upon to fuccour the distressed; you are under an obligation to lend all poffible affiftance to the fhipwreck'd, to the prifoner, to the fick, to the poor and needy, and to the unhappy under fentence of death. Whither do away ? what are you doing? The man you sport with is in great fear and trouble; rather affift him; bestow your eloquence in favour of thofe, who from real pains are ready to perish; fee how on every fide they all ftretch out their hands to you, and implore your affistance, with regard to the life that is past, and is still decaying; in you is all their hope and strength; they befeech you to deliver them from this ftorm of trouble and vexation, and fhew the clear light of truth to fuch as are distracted with error (d). Diftinguish to them what Nature hath made neceffary from what is vain and fuperfluous; what easy laws she hath impofed upon mankind; how pleasant life may be made; how free and easy to fuch as follow her laws; and how fevere and intricate to thofe, we rather truft to opinion than nature. But, pray, what do thefe fubtle difputants with all their art? Do they drive out the luftful paffions? Do they even restrain them? I could wish that these difputes only did no good: they really do hurt: I will make this manifeft to you when you please; and that good natural parts are cramped and weakened by fuch quirks and fubtleties. I am afhamed to fay, what useless weapons they put into the hands of those who are warring against fortune; and how poorly they equip them. This (the way you are in) is the only way to obtain the chief good; in the other the exceptions to philofophy are intricate and vile, fuch as engage the young students that attend the Prætor (e). For, what else dɔ ye, when you draw into error him, whom ye interrogate, but caufe him to appear nonfuited? But as the Prætor reftores the one to his right, fo does Philofophy the other. Why do ye depart from your large promifes? and having fpoke big words, that ye would cause that the glittering of gold fhould no more dazzle my eyes than that of a fword;-that with great conftancy I should despise and trample upon all that either men with or fear;-do ye defcend to the A, B, C, of gramınarians? Is this the way to heaven? For this is what philofophy promifeth, that it will make me equal to the powers above. To this was I invited for this purpose I came: of I came: perform your promise. As much as poffible, therefore, Lucilius, withdraw yourself from these exceptions and prescriptions fophifts. Plain and fimple arguments beft become and fet forth truth. Even had we more time in life, it must be fparingly laid out, that we might have enough for neceffaries: but now what madnefs is it to learn trifles, when life is so very fhort (f) ? ANNOTATION S, &c. (a) There feems to have been a confultation between Seneca and Lucilius concerning the latter's remaining in the province, when Seneca wifhed for his return to Romer (b) According to the Epicurean principle of meafuring friendship by profit and advantage. See Epp. 3. 20. and the following Note. (c) Ariftotle being asked, Quid effet Amicus? What was a friend? anfwered, pia Yuxù duo ovuzsiv ivanšja, One foul inhabiting two bodies. Amicum qui intuetur, tanquam exemplar aliquod intuetur fui, &c. Cic. Læl. c. 7. "Whoever is in poffeffion of a true friend, fees the exact counterpart of his own foul. In confequence of this moral resemblance between them, they are so intimately one, that no advantage can attend either, which does not equally communicate itself to both.” And "furely, nothing can be more delightful than to live in a conftant interchange and viciffitude of reciprocal good offices." "Not that a good man's benevolence is by any means confined to a fingle object he extends it to every individual. For true virtue incapable of partial, and contracted exceptions to the exercife of her benign fpirit, enlarges the foul with fentiments of univerfal philanthropy.” Melmoth. And fuch, from indisputable authority, were the primitive Chriftians; The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one foul, neither faid any of them, that ought of the things he pelled as his own; but they had all things in common. Acts 4. 32. And here I cannot but acknowledge, (as every Chriftian reader will acknowledge) an obligation to the tranflator of Cicero's Lælius, for his admirable remark (N. 68.) on this subject, concluding as follows; "Upon the whole then, it appears, that the divine Founder of the Christian Religion, as well by his own example, as by the spirit of his moral doctrine, has not only encouraged, but confecrated FRIENDSHIP. (d) This is what the philofophers promife, and perform according to Lucretius, V. 12. Deus ipfe fuit, Deus Qui princeps vitæ rationem invenit eam, quæ From cares and fears, and melancholy night, To joy and peace; and fhew'd us fplendid light.Creech. But we learn from the most authentic records, that the wifest and best of the antient philofophers, when they undertook to fettle the great foundations of religion, were at a lofs, and fo ftrangely puzzled, that the most knowing among them renounced all knowledge; and fo far were they from being able to point out the way to happiness, that scarce any two of them could agree in what that happiness confifted: wherefore, I fhould not think it much amifs, if a Chriftian looked upon these lines of Lucretius as prophetical, and applied them, with a grateful heart, to the Christian scheme.. The (e) The Prætorship was the fecond office for dignity in Rome. Their principal bufinefs was to adminifter juftice to the citizens, and strangers; and to make edicts as a fupplement to the civil law. (ƒ) Our want of time and the shortness of human life are some of the principal commonplace complaints, which we prefer against the established order of things. The man of business defpifes the man of pleasure, for fquandering his time away; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the man of bufinefs for the fame thing, yet both concur fuperciliously and abfurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being for having given them so little time. The philofopher, who mispends it very often as much as the others, joins in the fame cry and authorifes the impiety. Theophraftus thought it extremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world, when he had juft learned to live in it: his master Ariftotle found fault with Nature, for treating man, in this refpect, worse than several other animals: both very unphilofophically! And I love Seneca the better for his quarrel with Ariftotle on this head." Bolingbroke on Retirement. EPISTLE XLIX. On the Brevity of Life. Useful Things only to be ftudied. I OWN, my Lucilius, that he is fupine and negligent, who is no otherwise put in mind of a distant friend, than by an advertisement from fuch a place: but so it happens that places, which have been familiar to us, often call forth the affection repofited in our bosom; and not suffering the remembrance of a friend to be quite extinguished, rouse it from its dormant ftate; as the grief of those who have loft a friend or relation, though lulled for a while, is renewed at the fight of an old servant, or of the clothes, or place of refidence of the deceased. You cannot imagine what an affection for you, at our present distance, Campania, and particularly Naples, hath raised in me at the fight of your beloved (villa) Pompeii: your whole felf ftands, as it were, before my eye, especially at the time of my taking leave of you; I see you restraining the tear just starting from your eye; and labouring in vain to stifle those affections, which, from being fuppreffed, discover themselves the more: even now methinks I must part from you. For reflection? It was For what may not this now be applied to, upon reflection? but just now when I was fitting at the feet of Sotio (a) the philofopher; juft now I began to plead at the bar; just now I was defirous to leave off; and but just now the task was too much for me. O the infinite velocity of time, which is more apparent, when we look back what is past for it deceives us, when we are intent upon upon the prefent. So fwift is the courfe of its precipitate flight, we have not leifure to confider it (b). Shall I give you a reason for this? All that is past of time, is in one place: it is at once beheld, and gone at once. Hence all things fall into the vast abyss: otherwise there could not be fuch long intervals in a thing, fo entirely fhort in itself: we live, comparatively, but a moment; nay less than a moment; but this, little as it is, Nature hath divided into the fpecious appearance of a longer space: of one part she hath formed what we call infancy; of another, childhood; of another, youth; of another, manhood, ftill inclining to old age; and of another, old age itself. How How many degrees hath the comprehended in a narrow compass! It was but just now, when I began a friendship and correfpondence with you; and yet this now hath proved a great part of life; whofe brevity we must one day become fenfible of. I was not used to think the flight of time so swift; which now seems to me incredible (c); either because I am got as it were upon the last line of it (d); or because I have of late began to reflect and compute my lófs of it; and confequently am more vexed, that any one should spend the greater part of it in vanities and trifles, when the whole, though attended to with the most diligent care and circumfpection, fufficeth not for doing, what is neceffary to be done. Cicero affirms, that were his days to be doubled, he should not find time enough to read the Lyric Poets; I fay the fame of the Logicians: the more demure and wretched triflers! The former profeffedly wanton away their time; but thefe fondly imagine they are doing fomething of importance: not but that they are fometimes to be looked into; but nothing more than with a tranfient view; a falute, as it were, at the door; to the intent only that we may not be impofed upon; and fancy more good couched under them than is apparent. But why fhould you perplex VOL. I. Ꮓ |