an equitable judge, I shall only tax him with avarice in his prosperity, adulation in his adversity, and affectation in every state of life. Were I considerable enough to be banished from my country, methinks I would not purchase my restoration, at the expense of writing such a letter to the prince himself, as your christian stoick wrote to the emperor's slave, Polybius[1]. Thus I think of the man, and yet I read the author with pleasure; though I join in condemning those points, which he introduced into the Latin style; those eternal witticisms, strung like beads together, and that impudent manner of talking to the passions, before he has gone about to convince the judgment; which Erasmus, if I remember right, objects to him. He is seldom instructive, but he is perpetually entertaining; and when he gives you no new idea, he reflects your own back upon you with new lustre. I have lately writ an excellent treatise in praise of exile[2]. Many of the hints are taken from Consolatio ad Helviam, and other parts of his works. The whole is turned in his style and manner; and there is as much of the spirit of the portique, as I could infuse without running too far into the mirabilia, inopinata, et paradoxa; which Tully, and I think Seneca himself, ridicules the school of Zeno for. That you may laugh at me in your turn, I own ingenuously, that I began in jest, grew serious at the third or fourth page, and convinced myself, before I had done, of what perhaps I shall never convince any other, that a man of sense and virtue may be unfortunate, but can never
be
