Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/340

320 as your ague is, and for a little time, whether you will or not, entertain you scurvily.

When I consider you look (to me) like, I cannot but think it as odd a thing as if I should see Vandike with all his fine colours and pencils about him, his frame, and right light, and everything in order, and yet his hands tied behind him; and your lordship must excuse me, if upon it I be as bold.

The wisest men and greatest states have made no scruple to make use of brave men whom they had laid by with some disgrace; nor have those brave men, so laid by, made scruple, or thought it a disgrace, to serve again when they were called to it afterwards.

These general motives of the state and common good I will not so much as once offer up to your lordship's consideration, though, as 'tis fit, they have still the upper end. Yet, like great olios, they rather make a show than provoke appetite. There are two things which I shall not be ashamed to propound to you as ends, since the greater part of the wise men of the world have not been ashamed to make them theirs, and, if any has been found to contemn them, it hath been strongly to be suspected that either they could not easily attain to them, or else that the readiest way to attain to them was to contemn them. These two are honour and wealth; and though you stand possessed of both of them, yet is the first in your hands like a sword which, if not through negligence, by mischance hath taken rust, and needs a little clearing, and it would be much handsomer a present to posterity, if you yourself in your lifetime wipe it off.

For your estate (which, it may be, had been more, had it not been too much), though it is true that it is so far from being contemptible that it is nobly competent, yet must it be content to undergo the same fate greater states (common-wealths themselves) have been and are subject to; which is, when it comes to be divided in itself, not to be considerable. Both honour and estate are too fair and sweet flowers to be without prickles, or to be gathered without some scratches.

And now, my lord, I know you have nothing to urge but a kind of incapability in yourself to the service of this state, when indeed you have made the only bar you have by imagining you have one.

I confess (though) had vice so large an empire in the court as heretofore it has had, or were the times so dangerous that to the living well there wise conduct were more necessary than virtue itself, your lordship would have reason (with Æsop's country