cent, my education, and my attendance; that
I may not be taxed as presumptuous in borrowing the title of a goddess,
I come now in the next place to acquaint you what obliging favours I
everywhere bestow, and how largely my jurisdiction extends: for if,
as one has ingenuously noted, to be a god is no other than to be a
benefactor to mankind; and if they have been thought deservedly deified
who have invented the use of wine, corn, or any other convenience for
the well-being of mortals, why may not I justly bear the van among the
whole troop of gods, who in all, and toward all, exert an unparalleled
bounty and beneficence?

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For instance, in the first place, what can be more dear and precious
than life itself? and yet for this are none beholden, save to me alone.
For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten Pallas, nor the
buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, that multiplies and propagates mankind:
but my sportive and tickling recreation that proceeded the old crabbed
philosophers, and those who now supply their stead, the mortified monks
and friars; as also kings, priests, and popes, nay, the whole tribe of
poetic gods, who are at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of heaven
(though ne'er so spacious), to jostle for elbow room. But it is not
sufficient to have made it appear that I am the source and original
of all life, except I likewise shew that all the benefits of life are
equally at my disposal. And what are such? Why, can any one be said
properly to live to whom pleasure is denied? You will give me your
assent; for there is none I know among you so wise shall I say, or so
silly, as to be of a contrary opinion. The Stoics indeed contemn, and
pretend to banish pleasure; but this is only a dissembling trick, and
a putting the vulgar out of conceit with it, that they may more quietly
engross it to themselves: but I dare them now to confess what one stage
of life is not melancholy, dull, tiresome, tedious, and uneasy, unless
we spice it with pleasure, that hautgoust of Folly. Of the truth whereof
the never enough to be commended Sophocles is sufficient authority, who
gives me the highest character in that sentence of his,

To know nothing is the sweetest life.

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Yet abating from this, let us examine the case more narrowly. Who
knows not that the first scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and
de