But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as Quintilian says, Vitam fallere, To draw on still, and amuse, and deceive our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, and fall into that pit which Nature hath prepared for it. The meaning of all this is no more than that most vulgar saying, Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, He has lived well, who has lain well hidden. Which, if it be a truth, the world, I’ll swear, is sufficiently deceived. For my part, I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life, is in incognito. What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies? It is in my mind a very delightful pastime, for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage, Venus herself

CONTENTS

A veil of thickened air around them cast, That none might know, or see them as they passed.

The common story of Demosthenes’s confession that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a Tanker-woman say as he passed, “This is that Demosthenes,” is wonderful ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner, as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that in the midst of the most talked of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a Quotidian Ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour 

 Prev. P 23/73 next