began to have any! Yet the great herd, the multitude, that in all other things are divided, in this alone conspire and agree; to love money. They wish for it, they embrace it, they adore it: while yet it is possest with greater stir and torment than it was gotten.
The pure and lofty wisdom of the next note is worthy of Epictetus or Aurelius.
Some men, what losses soever they have, they make them greater: and if they have none, even all that is not gotten is a loss, Can there be creatures of more wretched condition than these, that continually labour under their own misery and others' envy?[1] A man should study other things: not to covet, not to fear, not to repent him: to make his base such as no tempest shall shake him: to be secure of all opinion, and pleasing to himself, even for that wherein he displeases others: for the worst opinion, gotten for doing well, should delight us. Wouldst not thou be just but for fame, thou oughtest to be it with infamy; he that would have his virtue published is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
In the following satirical observation all students will recognize the creator of Fastidious Brisk—and rather, perhaps, the spirit of Macilente than of Asper.
- ↑ That is, the envy they bear towards others: an equivocal, awkward, and affected Latinism. The writer would not—he never would—remember that a phrase or a construction which makes very good Latin may make very bad English.
