but for their
cares, miseries, suspicions, jealousies, discontents, folly and madness, I
refer you to Xenophon's Tyrannus, where king Hieron discourseth at large
with Simonides the poet, of this subject. Of all others they are most
troubled with perpetual fears, anxieties, insomuch, that as he said in
[707]Valerius, if thou knewest with what cares and miseries this robe were
stuffed, thou wouldst not stoop to take it up. Or put case they be secure
and free from fears and discontents, yet they are void [708]of reason too
oft, and precipitate in their actions, read all our histories, _quos de
stultis prodidere stulti_, Iliades, Aeneides, Annales, and what is the
subject?

"Stultorum regum, et populorum continet aestus."

"The giddy tumults and the foolish rage
Of kings and people."

How mad they are, how furious, and upon small occasions, rash and
inconsiderate in their proceedings, how they dote, every page almost will
witness,

------"delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi."

"When doting monarchs urge
Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge."

Next in place, next in miseries and discontents, in all manner of
hair-brain actions, are great men, _procul a Jove, procul a fulmine_, the
nearer the worse. If they live in court, they are up and down, ebb and flow
with their princes' favours, _Ingenium vultu statque caditque suo_, now
aloft, tomorrow down, as [709]Polybius describes them, "like so many
casting counters, now of gold, tomorrow of silver, that vary in worth as
the computant will; now they stand for units, tomorrow for thousands; now
before all, and anon behind." Beside, they torment one another with mutual
factions, emulations: one is ambitious, another enamoured, a third in debt,
a prodigal, overruns his fortunes, a fourth solicitous with cares, gets
nothing, &c. But for these men's discontents, anxieties, I refer you to
Lucian's Tract, _de mercede conductis_, [710]Aeneas Sylvius (_libidinis et
stultitiae servos_, he calls them), Agrippa, and many others.

Of philosophers and scholars _priscae sapientiae dictatores_, I have
already spoken in general terms, those superintendents of wit and learning,
men above men, those refined men, minions of the muses,

[711] ------"mentemque habere queis bonam
Et esse [712]corculis datum est."------

[713]These acute and subtle sophisters, so much honoured, have as much need
of hellebore as others.--[714]_O