more bitter hours, than many a prisoner or galley-slave; [3837]_Maecenas in pluma aeque vigilat ac Regulus in dolio_:  those poor starved Hollanders, whom [3838]Bartison their captain left in Nova Zembla, anno 1596, or those [3839]eight miserable Englishmen that were lately left behind, to winter in a stove in Greenland, in 77 deg. of lat., 1630, so pitifully forsaken, and forced to shift for themselves in a vast, dark, and desert place, to strive and struggle with hunger, cold, desperation, and death itself.  ’Tis a patient and quiet mind (I say it again and again) gives true peace and content.  So for all other things, they are, as old [3840]Chremes told us, as we use them.

       “Parentes, patriam, amicos, genus, cognates, divitias,
        Haec perinde sunt ac illius animus qui ea possidet;
        Qui uti scit, ei bona; qui utitur non recte, mala.”

“Parents, friends, fortunes, country, birth, alliance, &c., ebb and flow with our conceit; please or displease, as we accept and construe them, or apply them to ourselves.” Faber quisque fortunae suae, and in some sort I may truly say, prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, and which Seneca confirms out of his judgment and experience. [3841]"Every man’s mind is stronger than fortune, and leads him to what side he will; a cause to himself each one is of his good or bad life.”  But will we, or nill we, make the worst of it, and suppose a man in the greatest extremity, ’tis a fortune which some indefinitely prefer before prosperity; of two extremes it is the best. Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis, men in [3842]prosperity forget God and themselves, they are besotted with their wealth, as birds with henbane:  [3843] miserable if fortune forsake them, but more miserable if she tarry and overwhelm them:  for when they come to be in great place, rich, they that were most temperate, sober, and discreet in their private fortunes, as Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Heliogabalus (optimi imperatores nisi imperassent) degenerate on a sudden into brute beasts, so prodigious in lust, such tyrannical oppressors, &c., they cannot moderate themselves, they become monsters, odious, harpies, what not? Cum triumphos, opes, honores adepti sunt, ad voluptatem et otium deinceps se convertunt:  ’twas [3844]Cato’s note, “they cannot contain.”  For that cause belike

[3845] “Eutrapilus cuicunque nocere volebat,
        Vestimenta dabat pretiosa:  beatus enim jam,
        Cum pulchris tunicis sumet nova consilia et spes,
        Dormiet in lucem scorto, postponet honestum
        Officium”------

       “Eutrapilus when he would hurt a knave,
        Gave him gay clothes and wealth to make him brave: 
        Because now rich he would quite change his mind,
        Keep whores, fly out, set honesty behind.”

On the other side, in adversity many mutter and repine, despair, &c., both bad, I confess,