Cowleys Essays | Page 9

into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a
sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It is a
great pity the Babylonians suspected not his falsehood, that they might
have cut off his hands too, and whipped him back again. But the design
succeeded; he betrayed the city, and was made governor of it. What
brutish master ever punished his offending slave with so little mercy as
ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how many are there in all nations
who imitate him in some degree for 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 who sells his whole
time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant
than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are
both merchants, and that he is happier than both who can live
contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this
dependence upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power,
Amatorem trecentae Pirithoum cohibent catenae. Let us begin with him
by break of day, for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred
suitors, and the hall and anti-chambers (all the outworks) possessed by
the enemy; as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into
that, or to corrupt the guards for entrance. This is so essential a part of
greatness, that whosoever is without it looks like a fallen favourite, like
a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he please all the
morning. There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to
have their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing
creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their
coach. Now I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of any one
particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or