Potare, et spargere flores
Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi.
“Give me to drink, and, crown’d with flowers, despise
The grave disgrace of being thought unwise.”
There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas’s mind this man, being otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his own or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of the finest sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by the physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:—
Pol I me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;
“By heaven! you’ve killed me, friends, outright,
And not preserved me; since my dear delight
And pleasing error, by my better sense
Unhappily return’d, is banished hence;”
with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of Pirus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and free from all anxiety of mind. ‘Tis according to the old Greek verse, that “there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise.”
And Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom there is much sorrow;” and “Who gets wisdom gets labour and trouble.”
Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life we are not able to endure. Placet?—Pare. Non placet?—Qucumque vis, exi. Pungit dolor?—Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus armis Vulcaniis, id est fortitudine, rsist; “Does it please?—Obey it. Not please?—Go where thou wilt. Does grief prick thee,—nay, stab thee?—If thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist it.” And this word, so used in the Greek festivals, aut bibat, aut abeat, “either drink or go,” which sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon, who naturally changes the h into v, than on that of Cicero:—
Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.
Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius quo
Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius tas.
“If to live well and right thou dost not know,
Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.
Thou’st eaten, drunk, and play’d to thy content,
‘Tis time to make thy parting compliment,
Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff
The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;”
What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity, insensibility, and nonentity?
Democritum postquam matura vetustas
Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis;
Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.
“Soon as, through age, Democritus did find
A manifest decadence in his mind,
He thought he now surviv’d to his own wrong,
And went to meet his death, that stay’d too long.”
‘Tis what Antisthenes said, “That a man should either make provision of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;” and what Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtus:—