“Nee calidae citius decedunt corpore febres
               Textilibus si in picturis, ostroque rubenti
               Jactaris, quam si plebeia in veste cubandum est.”

     ["Nor do burning fevers quit you sooner if you are stretched on a
     couch of rich tapestry and in a vest of purple dye, than if you be
     in a coarse blanket.”—­Idem, ii. 34.]

The flatterers of Alexander the Great possessed him that he was the son of Jupiter; but being one day wounded, and observing the blood stream from his wound:  “What say you now, my masters,” said he, “is not this blood of a crimson colour and purely human?  This is not of the complexion of that which Homer makes to issue from the wounded gods.”  The poet Hermodorus had written a poem in honour of Antigonus, wherein he called him the son of the sun:  “He who has the emptying of my close-stool,” said Antigonus, “knows to the contrary.”  He is but a man at best, and if he be deformed or ill-qualified from his birth, the empire of the universe cannot set him to rights: 

                                   “Puellae
          Hunc rapiant; quidquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat,”

     ["Let girls carry him off; wherever he steps let there spring up a
     rose!”—­Persius, Sat., ii. 38.]

what of all that, if he be a fool? even pleasure and good fortune are not relished without vigour and understanding: 

          “Haec perinde sunt, ut ilius animus; qui ea possidet
          Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi, qui non uritur recte, mala.”

     ["Things are, as is the mind of their possessor; who knows how to
     use them, to him they are good; to him who abuses them, ill.” 
     —­Terence, Heart., i. 3, 21.]

Whatever the benefits of fortune are, they yet require a palate to relish them.  ’Tis fruition, and not possession, that renders us happy: 

["’Tis not lands, or a heap of brass and gold, that has removed fevers from the ailing body of the owner, or cares from his mind.  The possessor must be healthy, if he thinks to make good use of his realised wealth.  To him who is covetous or timorous his house and estate are as a picture to a blind man, or a fomentation to a gouty.”—­Horace, Ep., i. 2, 47.]

He is a sot, his taste is palled and flat; he no more enjoys what he has than one that has a cold relishes the flavour of canary, or than a horse is sensible of his rich caparison.  Plato is in the right when he tells us that health, beauty, vigour, and riches, and all the other things called goods, are equally evil to the unjust as good to the just, and the evil on the contrary the same.  And therefore where the body and the mind are in disorder, to what use serve these external conveniences:  considering that the least prick with a pin, or the least passion of the soul, is sufficient to deprive one of the pleasure of being sole monarch of the world.  At the first twitch of the gout it signifies much to be called Sir and Your Majesty!