a less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised? But you may say, “Though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths, too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry.” I grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such as cannot consist with liberty, though it may with honesty.

Thou art careful, frugal, painful. We commend a servant so, but not a friend.

Well, then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced to endure in this assent, but we are epicures and lords when once we are gotten up into the high places. This is but a short apprenticeship, after which we are made free of a royal company. If we fall in love with any beauteous woman, we must be content that they should be our mistresses whilst we woo them. As soon as we are wedded and enjoy, ’tis we shall be the masters.

I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness: we enter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony; we are bewitched with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse before we know its true nature and interior inconveniences. “A great fortune,” says Seneca, “is a great servitude.” But many are of that opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero. “We fear,” says he to Atticus, “death, and banishment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils, and if he have but some persons from whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will flatter and worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an honourable servitude, if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable in so base and contumelious a condition.” This was spoken as became the bravest man who was ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But with us, generally, no condition passes for servitude that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors. This is but a deception the sight through a false medium; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince, the groom, the gentleman, and the lord are as much servants one as the other. The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between a plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he 

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