“Communi fit vitio naturae, ut invisis, latitantibus
          atque incognitis rebus magis confidamas,
          vehementiusque exterreamur.”

     ["’Tis the common vice of nature, that we at once repose most
     confidence, and receive the greatest apprehensions, from things
     unseen, concealed, and unknown.”—­De Bello Civil, xi. 4.]

CHAPTER LIV

OF VAIN SUBTLETIES

There are a sort of little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men sometimes expect to derive reputation and applause:  as poets, who compose whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter; we see the shapes of eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets cut out by the ancient Greeks by the measure of their verses, making them longer or shorter, to represent such or such a figure.  Of this nature was his employment who made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number mentioned in Plutarch.  I am mightily pleased with the humour of him,

["Alexander, as may be seen in Quintil., Institut.  Orat., lib. ii., cap. 20, where he defines Maratarexvia to be a certain unnecessary imitation of art, which really does neither good nor harm, but is as unprofitable and ridiculous as was the labour of that man who had so perfectly learned to cast small peas through the eye of a needle at a good distance that he never missed one, and was justly rewarded for it, as is said, by Alexander, who saw the performance, with a bushel of peas.”—­Coste.]

who having a man brought before him that had learned to throw a grain of millet with such dexterity and assurance as never to miss the eye of a needle; and being afterwards entreated to give something for the reward of so rare a performance, he pleasantly, and in my opinion justly, ordered a certain number of bushels of the same grain to be delivered to him, that he might not want wherewith to exercise so famous an art.  ’Tis a strong evidence of a weak judgment when men approve of things for their being rare and new, or for their difficulty, where worth and usefulness are not conjoined to recommend them.

I come just now from playing with my own family at who could find out the most things that hold by their two extremities; as Sire, which is a title given to the greatest person in the nation, the king, and also to the vulgar, as merchants, but never to any degree of men between.  The women of great quality are called Dames, inferior gentlewomen, Demoiselles, and the meanest sort of women, Dames, as the first.  The cloth of state over our tables is not permitted but in the palaces of princes and in taverns.  Democritus said, that gods and beasts had sharper sense than men, who are of a middle form.  The Romans wore the same habit at funerals and feasts.  It is most certain that an extreme fear and an extreme