ut great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw.
When honour is at stake....

....to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause...."

Montaigne has the same general idea in the essay OF DIVERSION:

"If one demand that fellow, what interest he hath in such a
siege: The interest of example (he will say) and common
obedience of the Prince: I nor look nor pretend any benefit
thereby ... I have neither passion nor quarrel in the
matter. Yet the next day you will see him all changed, and
chafing, boiling and blushing with rage, in his rank of
battle, ready for the assault. It is the glaring reflecting
of so much steel, the flashing thundering of the cannon, the
clang of trumpets, and the rattling of drums, that have
infused this new fury and rancour in his swelling veins. A
frivolous cause, will you say? How a cause? There needeth
none to excite our mind. A doting humour without body,
without substance, overswayeth it up and down."

The thought recurs in the essay, OF CONTROLLING ONE'S WILL.[45]

"Our greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous
causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into,
for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why
that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune
of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause
of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so
vain and frivolous is the occasion."

And the idea in Hamlet's lines "rightly to be great," etc., is suggested
in the essay OF REPENTING,[46] where we have:

"The nearest way to come unto glory were to do that for
conscience which we do for glory.... The worth of the mind
consisteth not in going high, but in going orderly. Her
greatness is not exercised in greatness; in mediocrity it
is."

In the essay OF EXPERIENCE[47] there is a sentence partially expressing
the same thought, which is cited by Mr. Feis as a reproduction:

"The greatness of the mind is not so much to draw up, and
hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and
circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is
sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean things
better than eminent."

Here, certainly, as in the previous citation, the idea is not identical
wi