d mortal war against all care),
I am very ready to do every one the best service I can. I have been very
willing to seek occasion to do people a good turn, and to attach them to
me; and methinks there is no more agreeable employment for our means.
But I have yet more avoided receiving than sought occasions of giving,
and moreover, according to Aristotle, it is more easy., My fortune has
allowed me but little to do others good withal, and the little it can
afford, is put into a pretty close hand. Had I been born a great person,
I should have been ambitious to have made myself beloved, not to make
myself feared or admired: shall I more plainly express it? I should more
have endeavoured to please than to profit others. Cyrus very wisely, and
by the mouth of a great captain, and still greater philosopher, prefers
his bounty and benefits much before his valour and warlike conquests;
and the elder Scipio, wherever he would raise himself in esteem, sets a
higher value upon his affability and humanity, than on his prowess and
victories, and has always this glorious saying in his mouth: "That he has
given his enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends." I will
then say, that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be
by a more legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the
necessity of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as
that of my total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.

I have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension
that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night; compounding with
fortune, that it might be without terror and with quick despatch; and,
after my Paternoster, I have cried out,

"Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!"

["Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?"
--Virgil, Ecl., i. 71.]

What remedy? 'tis the place of my birth, and that of most of my
ancestors; they have here fixed their affection and name. We inure
ourselves to whatever we are accustomed to; and in so miserable a
condition as ours is, custom is a great bounty of nature, which benumbs
out senses to the sufferance of many evils. A civil war has this with it
worse than other wars have, to make us stand sentinels in our own houses.

"Quam miserum, porta vitam muroque tueri,
Vixque suae tutum viribus esse domus!"

["'Tis miserable to protect one'