"Tot per impotentia freta."
["Through so many ungovernable seas."—Catullus, iv. 18.]
In so great a siccity of devotion as we see in these days, we have a thousand and a thousand colleges that pass it over commodiously enough, expecting every day their dinner from the liberality of Heaven. Secondly, they do not take notice that this certitude upon which they so much rely is not much less uncertain and hazardous than hazard itself. I see misery as near beyond two thousand crowns a year as if it stood close by me; for besides that it is in the power of chance to make a hundred breaches to poverty through the greatest strength of our riches —there being very often no mean betwixt the highest and the lowest fortune:
"Fortuna vitrea est: turn, quum splendet, frangitur,"
["Fortune is glass: in its greatest brightness it breaks."
—Ex Mim. P. Syrus.]
and to turn all our barricadoes and bulwarks topsy-turvy, I find that, by divers causes, indigence is as frequently seen to inhabit with those who have estates as with those that have none; and that, peradventure, it is then far less grievous when alone than when accompanied with riches. These flow more from good management than from revenue;
"Faber est suae quisque fortunae"
["Every one is the maker of his own fortune."
—Sallust, De Repub. Ord., i. I.]
and an uneasy, necessitous, busy, rich man seems to me more miserable than he that is simply poor.
"In divitiis mopes, quod genus egestatis gravissimum est."