revocably, as men do to their
bodily children. That little I have done for it, is no more at my own
disposal; it may know many things that are gone from me, and from me hold
that which I have not retained; and which, as well as a stranger, I
should borrow thence, should I stand in need. If I am wiser than my
book, it is richer than I. There are few men addicted to poetry, who
would not be much prouder to be the father to the AEneid than to the
handsomest youth of Rome; and who would not much better bear the loss of
the one than of the other. For according to Aristotle, the poet, of all
artificers, is the fondest of his work. 'Tis hard to believe that
Epaminondas, who boasted that in lieu of all posterity he left two
daughters behind him that would one day do their father honour (meaning
the two victories he obtained over the Lacedaemonians), would willingly
have consented to exchange these for the most beautiful creatures of all
Greece; or that Alexander or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of the
grandeur of their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience of
children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever. Nay, I make a
great question, whether Phidias or any other excellent sculptor would be
so solicitous of the preservation and continuance of his natural
children, as he would be of a rare statue, which with long labour and
study he had perfected according to art. And to those furious and
irregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers towards their own
daughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the like is also found in
this other sort of parentage: witness what is related of Pygmalion who,
having made the statue of a woman of singular beauty, fell so
passionately in love with this work of his, that the gods in favour of
his passion inspired it with life.

"Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore,
Subsidit digitis."

["The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his fingers."
--Ovid, Metam., x. 283.]

CHAPTER IX

OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS

'Tis an ill custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of our time have got,
not to put on arms but just upon the point of the most extreme necessity,
and to lay them by again, so soon as ever there is any show of the danger
being over; hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling and
running to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his cuirass to
buckle on when his companions are