to
those who speak of themselves, as I do: I must march my pen as I do my
feet. Common life ought to have relation to the other lives: the virtue
of Cato was vigorous beyond the reason of the age he lived in; and for a
man who made it his business to govern others, a man dedicated to the
public service, it might be called a justice, if not unjust, at least
vain and out of season. Even my own manners, which differ not above an
inch from those current amongst us, render me, nevertheless, a little
rough and unsociable at my age. I know not whether it be without reason
that I am disgusted with the world I frequent; but I know very well that
it would be without reason, should I complain of its being disgusted with
me, seeing I am so with it. The virtue that is assigned to the affairs
of the world is a virtue of many wavings, corners, and elbows, to join
and adapt itself to human frailty, mixed and artificial, not straight,
clear, constant, nor purely innocent. Our annals to this very day
reproach one of our kings for suffering himself too simply to be carried
away by the conscientious persuasions of his confessor: affairs of state
have bolder precepts;

"Exeat aula,
Qui vult esse pius."

["Let him who will be pious retire from the court."
--Lucan, viii. 493]

I formerly tried to employ in the service of public affairs opinions and
rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted, as they were
either born with me, or brought away from my education, and wherewith I
serve my own turn, if not so commodiously, at least securely, in my own
particular concerns: a scholastic and novice virtue; but I have found
them unapt and dangerous. He who goes into a crowd must now go one way
and then another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the
straight way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much
according to his own method as to that of others; not according to what
he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him,
according to the time, according to the men, according to the occasions.
Plato says, that whoever escapes from the world's handling with clean
breeches, escapes by miracle: and says withal, that when he appoints his
philosopher the head of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like
that of Athens, and much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom
itself would be to see