feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a
gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
for me to moderate:

"Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."

["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]

He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle
region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:

"Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"

["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]

The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the