icular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to
a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:

"Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
singuli carpebant."

["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
against those that particularly concern himself."
--Livy, xxxiv. 36.]

I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
mad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
seditious in his heart." And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic
--[Theodore de Beza.]--amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we not
dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a
strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they in
the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
day to be eloquent. I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
worthy men to the like faults. For my part, I can say, "Such an one does
this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well." So in the
prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires. I should
rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
distrustful of things that I wish.

I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred