"If one demand that fellow, what interest he hath in such a siege: The interest of example (he will say) and common obedience of the Prince: I nor look nor pretend any benefit thereby ... I have neither passion nor quarrel in the matter. Yet the next day you will see him all changed, and chafing, boiling and blushing with rage, in his rank of battle, ready for the assault. It is the glaring reflecting of so much steel, the flashing thundering of the cannon, the clang of trumpets, and the rattling of drums, that have infused this new fury and rancour in his swelling veins. A frivolous cause, will you say? How a cause? There needeth none to excite our mind. A doting humour without body, without substance, overswayeth it up and down."
The thought recurs in the essay, Of Controlling one's Will.[45]
"Our greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so vain and frivolous is the occasion."
And the idea in Hamlet's lines "rightly to be great," etc., is suggested in the essay Of Repenting,[46] where we have:
"The nearest way to come unto glory were to do that for conscience which we do for glory.... The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in going orderly. Her greatness is not exercised in greatness; in mediocrity it is."
In the essay Of Experience[47] there is a sentence partially expressing the same thought, which is cited by Mr. Feis as a reproduction:
"The greatness of the mind is not so much to draw up, and hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean things better than eminent."
Here, certainly, as in the previous citation, the idea is not identical with that expressed by Hamlet. But the elements he combines are there; and again, in the essay Of Solitariness[48] we have the picture of the soldier fighting furiously for the quarrel of his careless king, with the question: "Who doth not willingly chop and counter-change his health, his ease, yea his life, for glory and reputation, the most unprofitable, vain, and counterfeit coin that is in use with us."
And yet again the thought crops up in the Apology of Raimond Sebonde:
"This horror-causing array of so many thousands of armed men, so great fury, earnest fervour, and undaunted courage, it would make one laugh to see on how many vain occasions it is raised and set on fire.... The hatred of one man, a spite, a pleasure ... causes which ought not to move two scolding fishwives to catch one another, is the soul and motive of all this hurly-burly."