Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/50

 Odi et Amo, qua nam id faciam ratione requiris?
 * Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.

I hate, and yet I love thee too; How can that be? I know not how; Only that so it is I know, And feel with torment that 'tis so. It is a deplorable condition this, and drives a man sometimes to pitiful shifts in seeking how to avoid himself.

The truth of the matter is, that neither he who is a fop in the world is a fit man to be alone, nor he who has set his heart much upon the world, though he has ever so much understanding; so that solitude can be well fitted and set right but upon a very few persons. They must have enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity; if the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had better be in a fair than in a wood alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick our pockets in the midst of company, but like