Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/192

170 felicity: for were it not for this shrew my wife, I were the happiest man in the world: So that of me may these verses be well verified:

This man who while he is in street Or public place is happy thought, No sooner sets in house his feet But woe is him: and not for nought. His wife him rules, and that's a spight, She chides, she fights, from morn to night.

Well, my masters, you have many occasions (I am sure) that vex you: as for myself I grieve at nothing. Many such secret sores there be that put them to anguish and pain who are rich and in high authority, yea, and trouble kings and princes themselves; howsoever the common people see no such matter; and why? their pomp and outward glory covereth and hideth all. For when we read thus in Homer:

O happy king, Sir Agamemnon hight. The son of Atreus, that worthy knight Bom in good hour, and lull'd in fortune's lap. Most puissant, rich, and thrall to no mishap:

this is a rehearsal surely of an outward beatitude only, in regard of his arms, horses and men of war about him: for the voices which are breathed out and uttered of his passions, do falsify that opinion of him, and bear witness of the contrary: as may appear by this testimony of himself in Homer:

Great Jupiter, god Saturn's son, Hath plung'd me deep in woe begone,

Euripides also to the like effect:

Your state, old sir, I happy deem. And his no less I do admire Who led his life, unknown, unseen. From danger far, from vain desire.

By these and such-like meditations, a man may by little and little spend and diminish that quarrelsome and complaining discontentment of the mind against fortune, in debasing and casting down his own condition with the wonderful admiration of his neighbour's state. But there is nothing that doth so much hurt unto our tranquillity of mind as this, when our affection and will to a thing is disproportioned unto our might and power; as if we set up greater sails than our vessel will bear, building our hopes and desires as castles in the air without a sound foundation, and promising ourselves more than reason is; for afterwards