Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/24

 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