[4514] “Prima fere vota, et cunctis notissima templis,
Divitiae ut crescant.”------

All our labours, studies, endeavours, vows, prayers and wishes, are to get, how to compass it.

[4515] “Haec est illa cui famulatur maximus orbis,
        Diva potens rerum, domitrixque pecunia fati.”

“This is the great goddess we adore and worship; this is the sole object of our desire.”  If we have it, as we think, we are made for ever, thrice happy, princes, lords, &c.  If we lose it, we are dull, heavy, dejected, discontent, miserable, desperate, and mad.  Our estate and bene esse ebbs and flows with our commodity; and as we are endowed or enriched, so are we beloved and esteemed:  it lasts no longer than our wealth; when that is gone, and the object removed, farewell friendship:  as long as bounty, good cheer, and rewards were to be hoped, friends enough; they were tied to thee by the teeth, and would follow thee as crows do a carcass:  but when thy goods are gone and spent, the lamp of their love is out, and thou shalt be contemned, scorned, hated, injured. [4516]Lucian’s Timon, when he lived in prosperity, was the sole spectacle of Greece, only admired; who but Timon?  Everybody loved, honoured, applauded him, each man offered him his service, and sought to be kin to him; but when his gold was spent, his fair possessions gone, farewell Timon:  none so ugly, none so deformed, so odious an object as Timon, no man so ridiculous on a sudden, they gave him a penny to buy a rope, no man would know him.

’Tis the general humour of the world, commodity steers our affections throughout, we love those that are fortunate and rich, that thrive, or by whom we may receive mutual kindness, hope for like courtesies, get any good, gain, or profit; hate those, and abhor on the other side, which are poor and miserable, or by whom we may sustain loss or inconvenience.  And even those that were now familiar and dear unto us, our loving and long friends, neighbours, kinsmen, allies, with whom we have conversed, and lived as so many Geryons for some years past, striving still to give one another all good content and entertainment, with mutual invitations, feastings, disports, offices, for whom we would ride, run, spend ourselves, and of whom we have so freely and honourably spoken, to whom we have given all those turgent titles, and magnificent eulogiums, most excellent and most noble, worthy, wise, grave, learned, valiant, &c., and magnified beyond measure:  if any controversy arise between us, some trespass, injury, abuse, some part of our goods be detained, a piece of land come to be litigious, if they cross us in our suit, or touch the string of our commodity, we detest and depress them upon a sudden:  neither affinity, consanguinity, or old acquaintance can contain us, but [4517]_rupto jecore exierit Caprificus_.  A golden apple sets altogether by the ears, as if a marrowbone or honeycomb were flung amongst bears: