strained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57]
and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and little
ones. His was no absolute renunciation, no impossible perfection;[58]
but few men have painted more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or more
entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of a
well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a lofty self-denial.
In his youth, he tells us, he was preparing himself for a righteous
life, in his old age for a noble death.[59] And let us not forget, that
when the hour of crisis came which tested the real calm and bravery of
his soul, he was not found wanting. "With no dread," he writes to
Lucilius, "I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside all
artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting myself
whether I merely _speak_ or really _feel_ as a brave man should; whether
all those words of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled against fortune
were mere pretence and pantomime.... Disputations and literary talks,
and words collected from the precepts of philosophers, and eloquent
discourse, do not prove the true strength of the soul. For the mere
_speech_ of even the most cowardly is bold; what you have really
achieved will then be manifest when your end is near. I accept the
terms, I do not shrink from the decision." [60]

[Footnote 57: Ep. 63.]

[Footnote 58: Martha, _Les Moralistes_, p. 61.]

[Footnote 59: Ep. 61.]

[Footnote 60: Ep. 26.]

"_Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicrum_." They were courageous
and noble words, and they were justified in the hour of trial. When we
remember the sins of Seneca's life, let us recall also the constancy of
his death; while we admit the inconsistencies of his systematic
philosophy, let us be grateful for the genius, the enthusiasm, the glow
of intense conviction, with which he clothes his repeated utterance of
truths, which, when based upon a surer basis, were found adequate for
the moral regeneration of the world. Nothing is more easy than to sneer
at Seneca, or to write clever epigrams on one whose moral attainments
fell infinitely short of his own great ideal. But after all he was not
more inconsistent than thousands of those who condemn him. With all his
faults he yet lived a nobler and a better life, he had loftier aims, he
was braver, more self-denying--nay, even more consistent--than the
majority of professing Christians. It would be well for us all if