“Tun’, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas?”

     ["Dost thou, then, old man, collect food for others’ ears?”
     —­Persius, Sat., i. 22.]

they have only retired to take a better leap, and by a stronger motion to give a brisker charge into the crowd.  Will you see how they shoot short?  Let us put into the counterpoise the advice of two philosophers, of two very different sects, writing, the one to Idomeneus, the other to Lucilius, their friends, to retire into solitude from worldly honours and affairs.  “You have,” say they, “hitherto lived swimming and floating; come now and die in the harbour:  you have given the first part of your life to the light, give what remains to the shade.  It is impossible to give over business, if you do not also quit the fruit; therefore disengage yourselves from all concern of name and glory; ’tis to be feared the lustre of your former actions will give you but too much light, and follow you into your most private retreat.  Quit with other pleasures that which proceeds from the approbation of another man:  and as to your knowledge and parts, never concern yourselves; they will not lose their effect if yourselves be the better for them.  Remember him, who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons?  ‘A few are enough for me,’ replied he; ’I have enough with one; I have enough with never an one.’—­[Seneca, Ep., 7.]—­He said true; you and a companion are theatre enough to one another, or you to yourself.  Let the people be to you one, and be you one to the whole people.  ’Tis an unworthy ambition to think to derive glory from a man’s sloth and privacy:  you are to do like the beasts of chase, who efface the track at the entrance into their den.  You are no more to concern yourself how the world talks of you, but how you are to talk to yourself.  Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself:  it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself.  A man may miscarry alone as well as in company.  Till you have rendered yourself one before whom you dare not trip, and till you have a bashfulness and respect for yourself,

“Obversentur species honestae animo;”

          ["Let honest things be ever present to the mind”
          —­Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 22.]

present continually to your imagination Cato, Phocion, and Aristides, in whose presence the fools themselves will hide their faults, and make them controllers of all your intentions; should these deviate from virtue, your respect to those will set you right; they will keep you in this way to be contented with yourself; to borrow nothing of any other but yourself; to stay and fix your soul in certain and limited thoughts, wherein she may please herself, and having understood the true and real goods, which men the more enjoy the more they understand, to rest satisfied, without desire of prolongation of life or name.”  This is the precept of the true and natural philosophy, not of a boasting and prating philosophy, such as that of the two former.