g can. In travelling, it
pleases me that I may stay where I like, without inconvenience, and that
I have a place wherein commodiously to divert myself. I love a private
life, because 'tis my own choice that I love it, not by any dissenting
from or dislike of public life, which, peradventure, is as much according
to my complexion. I serve my prince more cheerfully because it is by the
free election of my own judgment and reason, without any particular
obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to do for being
rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the rest. I hate
the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon which I had only
to depend would have me by the throat;

"Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;"

["Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the
shore."--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]

one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity
in this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts
are vanity, and all wisdom is vanity:

"Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt."

["The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."
--Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]

These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses
that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material
and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper
essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself:

"Quisque suos patimur manes."

["We each of us suffer our own particular demon."--AEneid, vi. 743.]

"Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;
ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur."

["We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal
nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own."
--Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]

To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human
being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?

I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the
proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any
inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has
but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece
whereon to write a love-letter to his companion's wife. She whom you
ha