ch I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and
not meddle with us at all. What will he get by it?

"Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri
Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro
Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae."

["If I see an exemplary and good man, I liken it to a two-headed
boy, or a fish turned up by the plough, or a teeming mule."
--Juvenal, xiii. 64.]

One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present; we may wish
for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have;
and, peradventure, 'tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good. So
long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall
shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will I be. If they
unfortunately happen to thwart and contradict one another, so as to
produce two parts, of doubtful and difficult choice, I will willingly
choose to withdraw and escape the tempest; in the meantime nature or the
hazards of war may lend me a helping hand. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
I should frankly have declared myself; but, as amongst the three robbers
who came after,--[Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.]--a man must have
been necessitated either to hide himself, or have gone along with the
current of the time, which I think one may fairly do when reason no
longer guides:

"Quo diversus abis?"

["Whither dost thou run wandering?"--AEneid, v. 166.]

This medley is a little from my theme; I go out of my way; but 'tis
rather by licence than oversight; my fancies follow one another, but
sometimes at a great distance, and look towards one another, but 'tis
with an oblique glance. I have read a dialogue of Plato,--[The
Phaedrus.]--of the like motley and fantastic composition, the beginning
about love, and all the rest to the end about rhetoric; they fear not
these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves be
carried away at the pleasure of the wind, or at least to seem as if they
were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole
matter; they often denote it by some mark only, as these others, Andria,
Eunuchus; or these, Sylla, Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress,
by leaps and skips; 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac.
There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme; where the
proposition of his argument is only found by i