Page:On Friendship (Howe, 1915).pdf/28



(A woman beautiful above ends in a fish below)

I can go along in this second point with my painter: but I fall short in the other and better part; for my skill.is not great enough to dare to undertake a rich and finished picture, formed after the rules of art. I have decided to borrow one from Estienne de La Boetie, which will shed honour on all the rest of this work: it is a treatise to which he gave the name of Voluntary Servitude; but those who did not know that, have since very properly re-baptized it, As against One. He wrote it as a sort of essay in his early youth, in honour of liberty as against tyrants. Since that time it passes about through the hands of intelligent people, not without great and well-deserved praise; because it is charming and as full as possible. Still one must say that it is not the best he could have done: and if at the more advanced age when I knew him, he had formed a design like mine to write down his fancies, we should have seen a good many rare things, which would very nearly have approached the glory of antiquity; for in this sort of natural gifts