ro Caesar, by a
saying of yours, which I remember having heard with admiration and
which I afterward told to others: a noble saying, showing a great mind
and great gentleness, which suddenly burst from you without
premeditation, and was not meant to reach any ears but your own, and
which displayed the conflict which was raging between your natural
goodness and your imperial duties. Your praefect Burrus[83], an
excellent man who was born to be the servant of such an emperor as you
are, was about to order two brigands to be executed, and was pressing
you to write their names and the grounds on which they were to be put
to death; this had often been put off, and he was insisting that it
should then be done. When he reluctantly produced the document and
put it in your equally reluctant hands, you exclaimed: "Would that I
had never learned my letters!" O what a speech, how worthy to be heard
by all nations, both those who dwell within the Roman Empire, those
who enjoy a debatable independence upon its borders, and those who
either in will or in deed fight against it! It is a speech which ought
to be spoken before a meeting of all mankind, whose words all kings
and princes ought to swear to and obey: a speech worthy of the days of
human innocence, and worthy to bring back that golden age. Now in
truth we ought all to agree to love righteousness and goodness,
covetousness, which is the root of all evil, ought to be driven away,
piety and virtue, good faith and modesty ought to resume their
interrupted reign, and the vices which have so long and so shamefully
ruled us ought at last to give way to an age of happiness and purity.

IV

THE PILOT[84]

A tempest and storme hurt a Pilot, but notwithstanding they make him
not worse. Certaine Stoicks do thus answer against this, that a Pilot
is made worse by a tempest and by a storme, because that thing which
he had purposed he cannot effect, nor keep on his course. Worse is he
made, not in his skill, but in his work. To whom the Aristotelian:
therefore, saith he, pouertie and dolour, and what soeuer such like
thing there shall be, shall not take vertue from him, but shall hinder
his working thereof.

This were rightly said, except the condition of a Pilot and of a
wise-man were unlike. For the purpose of him is in leading his life,
not without faile to effect that which he assayeth to doe, but to doe
all things aright. It is the purpose of the Pilot, without faile to
bri