making all things bow under you, is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure:
'tis to slide, not to go; 'tis to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man
accompanied with omnipotence: you overwhelm him; he must beg disturbance
and opposition as an alms: his being and his good are in indigence. Evil
to man is in its turn good, and good evil. Neither is pain always to be
shunned, nor pleasure always to be pursued.

Their good qualities are dead and lost; for they can only be perceived by
comparison, and we put them out of this: they have little knowledge of
true praise, having their ears deafened with so continual and uniform an
approbation. Have they to do with the stupidest of all their subjects?
they have no means to take any advantage of him; if he but say: "'Tis
because he is my king," he thinks he has said enough to express that he
therefore suffered himself to be overcome. This quality stifles and
consumes the other true and essential qualities: they are sunk in the
royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves with but actions
that directly concern and serve the function of their place; 'tis so much
to be a king, that this alone remains to them. The outer glare that
environs him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there
repelled and dissipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing
light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused
it, esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no advantage
from a judgment so partial, and that was so little free to judge.

As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorise
all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imitation
also. Every one of Alexander's followers carried his head on one side,
as he did; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran against one another in his
presence, and stumbled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to shew
they were as purblind as he. Hernia itself has also served to recommend
a man to favour; I have seen deafness affected; and because the master
hated his wife, Plutarch--[who, however, only gives one instance; and in
this he tells us that the man visited his wife privately.]--has seen his
courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and, which is yet more,
uncleanliness and all manner of dissoluteness have so been in fashion; as
also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion,
effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be; and by an exa