I love and commend a true good-fame, because it is the fhadow of virtue : not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious fhadow, and, like that of St Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, fuch as was the glory of Cato and Ariftides; but it was harmful to them" both, and is feldom beneficial to any man, whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot fay, because I love not philofophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been fo kind as to come back to inform us. Up: on the whole matter, I account a perfon who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the converfation of two or three agreeable friends, with little com-" merce in the world befides, who. is efteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and fo, after a, healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniencies of old-age, goes more filently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him fo much as cry in the exit) :* this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this "muta perfona," I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the ftage with fhow and noife, nay, even than Auguftus himfelf, who afked, with his laft breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.

SENECA, ex Thyefte, A&t, II. Chor.

Stet, quicumquè volet potens," &c.
Upon the flippery tops of human state,
The gilded pinnacles of fate,

Let others proudly stand, and, for a while
The giddy danger to beguile,

With joy, and with disdain, look down on all,

Till their heads turn, and down they fall.
Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near
That I no fall to earth may fear,
And, O ye gods, at a good distance feat
From the long ruins of the great.
Here, wrapt in th' arms of quiet let me lie;
Quiet, companion of obscurity !

Here let my life with as much filence slide,
As time, that measures it, does glide.

Nor let the breath of infamy or fame,
From town to town echo about my name.
Nor let my homely death embroider'd be
With fcutcheon or with elegy.
An old plebeian let me die,
Alas! all then are fuch as well as I.

To him, alas, to him, I fear,

The face of death will terrible appear;
Who, in his life flattering his fenfelefs pride,
By being known to all the world befide,
Does not himself, when he is dying, know,
Nor what he is, nor whither he's to go.

IV. OF

T

IV.

OF AGRICULTURE.

HE firft wifh of Virgil (as you will find anon by his verses) was to be a good philofopher; the fe~cond, a good husbandman: and God (whom he seemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him, just as he did with Solomon; because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, he added all things elfe, which were subordinately to be defired. He made him one of the best philofophers, and best hufbandmen; and, to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the best poet : he made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who defired to be no richer

"O fortunatus nimium, & bona qui sua novit!”

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philofopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

But, fince nature denies to moft men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or poffibility, of applying themselves wholly to philofophy, the beft mixture of human affairs that we can make, are the employments of a country life. It is, as Columela * calls it, " Res fine dubitatione

* Lib. I. c. i.

"proxima,

"proxima, & quafi confanguinea fapientiæ," the neareft neighbour, or rather next in kindred, to philosophy. Varro fays, the principles of it are the fame which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature, Earth, Water, Air, and the Sun. It does certainly comprehend more parts of philofophy, than any one profession, art, or fcience, in the world befides and therefore Cicero fays †, the pleasures of a husbandman," mihi ad "fapientis vitam proxime videntur accedere," come very nigh to thofe of a philofopher. There is no other fort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrift The utility of it to a man's felf; the usefulness, or rather neceffity, of it to all the rest of mankind; the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity.

The Utility (I mean plainly the lucre of it) is not fo great, now in our nation, as arifes from merchandife and the trading of the city, from whence many of the beft eftates and chief honours of the kingdom are derived: we have no men now fetched from the plough to be made lords, as they were in Rome to be made confuls and dictators; the reafon of which I conceive. to be from an evil cuftom, now grown as ftrong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put their ̧ children to be bred-up apprentices in agriculture, as in other trades, but fuch who are fo poor, that, when they. come to be men, they have not wherewithal to set up. in it, and fo can only farm fome small parcel of ground,

+ De Senec..

the

the rent of which devours all but the bare fubfiftence

of the tenant: whilft they who are proprietors of the land are either too proud, or, for want of that kind of education, too ignorant, to improve their eftates, though the means of doing it be as easy and certain in this, as in any other track of commerce. If there were always two or three thousand youths, for seven or eight years, bound to this profeffion, that they might learn the whole art of it, and afterwards be enabled to be masters in it, by a moderate stock; I cannot doubt but that we should fee as many aldermen's eftates made in the country, as now we do out of all kind of merchandizing in the city. There are as many ways to be rich, and, which is better, there is no poffibility to be poor, without fuch negligence as can neither have excufe nor pity; for a little ground will without queftion feed a little family, and the fuperfluities of life (which are now in fome cafes by custom made almoft neceffary) must be fupplied out of the fuperabundance of art and induftry, or contemned by as great a degree of philofophy.

As for the Neceffity of this art, it is evident enough, fince this can live without all others, and no one other without this. This is like fpeech, without which the fociety of men cannot be preserved; the others like figures and tropes of speech, which ferve only to adorn it. Many nations have lived, and some do still, without any art but this: not fo elegantly, I confefs, but ftill they live; and almost all the other arts, which are here practifed, are beholden to this for most of their materials.

The