fortune is a stepmother to us, a parent to them.  “We envy” (saith [4822]Isocrates) “wise, just, honest men, except with mutual offices and kindnesses, some good turn or other, they extort this love from us; only fair persons we love at first sight, desire their acquaintance, and adore them as so many gods:  we had rather serve them than command others, and account ourselves the more beholding to them, the more service they enjoin us:”  though they be otherwise vicious, dishonest, we love them, favour them, and are ready to do them any good office for their [4823]beauty’s sake, though they have no other good quality beside. Dic igitur o fomose, adolescens (as that eloquent Phavorinus breaks out in [4824]Stobeus) dic Autiloque, suavius nectare loqueris; dic o Telemache, vehementius Ulysse dicis; dic Alcibiades utcunque ebrius, libentius tibi licet ebrio auscultabimus.  “Speak, fair youth, speak Autiloquus, thy words are sweeter than nectar, speak O Telemachus, thou art more powerful than Ulysses, speak Alcibiades though drunk, we will willingly hear thee as thou art.”  Faults in such are no faults:  for when the said Alcibiades had stolen Anytus his gold and silver plate, he was so far from prosecuting so foul a fact (though every man else condemned his impudence and insolency) that he wished it had been more, and much better (he loved him dearly) for his sweet sake.  “No worth is eminent in such lovely persons, all imperfections hid;” non enim facile de his quos plurimum diligimus, turpitudinem suspicamur, for hearing, sight, touch, &c., our mind and all our senses are captivated, omnes sensus formosus delectat.  Many men have been preferred for their person alone, chosen kings, as amongst the Indians, Persians, Ethiopians of old; the properest man of person the country could afford, was elected their sovereign lord; Gratior est pulchro veniens e corpore virtus, [4825]and so have many other nations thought and done, as [4826]Curtius observes:  Ingens enim in corporis majestate veneratio est, “for there is a majestical presence in such men;” and so far was beauty adored amongst them, that no man was thought fit to reign, that was not in all parts complete and supereminent.  Agis, king of Lacedaemon, had like to have been deposed, because he married a little wife, they would not have their royal issue degenerate.  Who would ever have thought that Adrian’ the Fourth, an English monk’s bastard (as [4827]Papirius Massovius writes in his life), inops a suis relectus, squalidus et miser, a poor forsaken child, should ever come to be pope of Rome?  But why was it? Erat acri ingenio, facundia expedita eleganti corpore, facieque laeta ac hilari, (as he follows it out of [4828]Nubrigensis, for he ploughs with his heifer,) “he was wise, learned, eloquent, of a pleasant, a promising countenance, a goodly, proper man; he had, in a word, a winning look of his own,” and that carried it, for that he was especially advanced.  So “Saul was