Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/312

 the moment the best policy. If necessary, though now an old man, he would try to begin life over again and seek to restore his fortunes. But for the first time in his life he began to lose hope about the prospect in Ireland, where all seemed in utter jeopardy.

'Let us have patience,' he wrote to Southwell in October, 'till our browne necks returne into fashion; nor venture upon any necklaces that will strangle us, and that we cannot unty when we please.' 'I am sorry the Rocks whereupon I have formerly split, must be shaken down by a general earthquake. The posts which supported us were rotten and painted; you must not wonder that they should moulder away.... For, briefe, I am beginning the world again, and endeavour instead of quarrelling with the King's power, to make him exert all he hath for the good of his subjects.' In the course of the next month he writes: 'I tell you again, that I heard nothing from the King contrary to what he was before graciously pleased to tell me, concerning the settlement; but say as I formerly said that others go very close hal'd upon that wind. "When I told you I would begin the world anew, I meant that I would take a new flight, and not any more from Irish grounds. I behave myself towards great men as cautiously as I can, and repent of my former methods.... I have matters under my hands; and do study how to proceed humbly with them.... The King told me last week that my Essays were answering in France; and I am told by several others that the mightiest hammers there are battering my poor anvill &c. In all these cases I hear an old voyce, "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito."' 'I do not wonder,' he wrote to Southwell in the same month, 'at your apprehensions, because I take them to be very like my owne. I cannot tell what to say that may sweeten them. I find no man doubts but that the Chief Government of Ireland, the Benches, the Officers, and soldiers also of the Army, the Commissioners and Collectors of the Revenue, the Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace, the Magistrates of Corporations, and the