Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/139

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OF AVARICE.
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to God, or angels, or rational men for his actions. The second can give no reason or colour, not to the devil himself, for what he does: he is a slave to Mammon without wages. The first makes a shift to be beloved: aye, and envied, too, by some people. The second is the universal object of hatred and contempt. There is no vice has been so pelted with good sentences, and especially by the poets, who have pursued it with stories and fables, and allegories and allusions; and moved, as we say, every stone to fling at it, among all which, I do not remember a more fine and gentleman-like correction than that which was given it by one line of Ovid's.

Desunt luxuriæ multa, avaritiæ omnia.

Much is wanting to luxury; all to avarice

To which saying I have a mind to add one member and render it thus:—

Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things.

Somebody says of a virtuous and wise man, that