Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/157

 Nor bribe or flatter any of the great.
 * But you're a man of learning, prudent, just:

A man of courage, firm, and fit for trust.
 * Why, you may stay, and live unenvied here;

But, faith! go back, and keep you where you were. Nay, if nothing of all this were in the case, yet the very sight of uncleanness is loathsome to the cleanly; the sight of folly and impiety vexatious to the wise and pious.

Lucretius, by his favour, though a good poet, was but an ill-natured man, when he said, "It was delightful to see other men in a great storm." And no less ill-natured should I think Democritus, who laughed at all the world, but that he retired himself so much out of it that we may perceive he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much delighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses, which upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned not only melancholy, but even sick with