In Seneca’s life, then, we see as clearly as in those of many professing Christians that it is impossible to be at once worldly and righteous.  Seneca’s utter failure was due to the vain attempt to combine in his own person two opposite characters—­that of a Stoic and that of a courtier.  Had he been a true philosopher, or a mere courtier, he would have been happier, and even more respected.  To be both was absurd:  hence, even in his writings, he was driven into inconsistency.  He is often compelled to abandon the lofty utterances of Stoicism, and to charge philosophers with ignorance of life.  In his treatise on a Happy Life he is obliged to introduce a sort of indirect autobiographical apology for his wealth and position.[37] In spite of his lofty pretensions to simplicity, in spite of that sort of amateur asceticism which, in common with other wealthy Romans, he occasionally practised, in spite of his final offer to abandon his entire patrimony to the Emperor, we fear that he cannot be acquitted of an almost insatiable avarice.  We need not indeed believe the fierce calumnies which charged him with exhausting Italy by a boundless usury, and even stirring up a war in Britain by the severity of his exactions; but it is quite clear that he deserved the title of Proedives, “the over-wealthy,” by which he has been so pointedly signalized.  It is strange that the most splendid intellects should so often have sunk under the slavery of this meanest vice.  In the Bible we read how the “rewards of divination” seduced from his allegiance to God the splendid enchanter of Mesopotamia: 

       “In outline dim and vast
        Their fearful shadows cast
    The giant form of Empires on their way
        To ruin:—­one by one
        They tower and they are gone,
    Yet in the prophet’s soul the dreams of avarice stay.

       “No sun or star so bright,
        In all the world of light,
    That they should draw to heaven his downward eye: 
        He hears the Almighty’s word,
        He sees the angel’s sword,
    Yet low upon the earth his heart and treasure lie.”

[Footnote 37:  See Ad.  Polyb. 37:  Ep. 75; De Vit.  Beat. 17, 18, 22.]

And in Seneca we see some of the most glowing pictures of the nobility of poverty combined with the most questionable avidity in the pursuit of wealth.  Yet how completely did he sell himself for naught.  It is the lesson which we see in every conspicuously erring life, and it was illustrated less than three years afterwards in the terrible fate of the tyrant who had driven him to death.  For a short period of his life, indeed, Seneca was at the summit of power; yet, courtier as he was, he incurred the hatred, the suspicion, and the punishment of all the three Emperors during whose reigns his manhood was passed.  “Of all unsuccessful men,” says Mr. Froude, “in every shape, whether divine or human, or devilish,