Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.
How well your lordship will deserve that praise, I need no inspiration to foretell. You have already left no room for prophecy: Your early undertakings have been such, in the service of your king and country, when you offered yourself to the most dangerous employment, that of the sea; when you chose to abandon those delights, to which your youth and fortune did invite you, to undergo the hazards, and, which was worse, the company of common seamen, that you have made it evident, you will refuse no opportunity of rendering yourself useful to the nation, when either your courage or conduct shall be required[3]. The same zeal and faithfulness continue in your blood, which animated one of your noble ancestors to sacrifice his life in the quarrels of his sovereign[4]; though, I hope, both for your sake, and for the public tranquillity, the same occasion will never be offered to your lordship, and that a better destiny will attend you. But I make haste to consider you as abstracted from a court, which (if you will give me leave to use a term of logic) is only an adjunct, not a propriety of happiness. The academics, I confess, were willing to admit the goods of fortune into their notion of felicity; but I do not remember, that any of the sects of old philosophers did ever leave a room for greatness. Neither am I formed to praise a court, who admire and covet nothing, but the easiness and quiet of retirement. I naturally withdraw my sight from a precipice; and, admit the prospect be never so large and goodly, can take no pleasure even in looking on the downfal, though I am secure from the danger. Methinks, there is something of a malignant joy in that excellent description of Lucretius;
Suave, mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terrâ magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quenquam est jucunda voluptas,
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est.
I am sure his master Epicurus, and my better master Cowley, preferred the solitude of a garden, and the conversation of a friend, to any consideration, so much as a regard, of those unhappy people, whom, in our own wrong, we call the great. True greatness, if it be any where on earth, is in a private virtue; removed from the notion of pomp and vanity, confined to a contemplation of itself, and centering on itself:
Omnis enim per se Divûm natura necesse est
Immortali ævo summâ cum pace fruatur;