The giddy tumults and the foolish rage Of kings and people.
How mad they are, how furious, and upon small occasions, rash and inconsiderate in their proceedings, how they dote, every page almost will witness, ———delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
When doting monarchs urge Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge.
Next in place, next in miseries and discontents, in all manner of hair-brain actions, are great men, procul a Jove, procul a fulmine, the nearer the worse. If they live in court, they are up and down, ebb and flow with their princes' favours, Ingenium vultu statque caditque suo, now aloft, tomorrow down, as [709]Polybius describes them, like so many casting counters, now of gold, tomorrow of silver, that vary in worth as the computant will; now they stand for units, tomorrow for thousands; now before all, and anon behind. Beside, they torment one another with mutual factions, emulations: one is ambitious, another enamoured, a third in debt, a prodigal, overruns his fortunes, a fourth solicitous with cares, gets nothing, &c. But for these men's discontents, anxieties, I refer you to Lucian's Tract, de mercede conductis, [710]Aeneas Sylvius (libidinis et stultitiae servos, he calls them), Agrippa, and many others. Of philosophers and scholars priscae sapientiae dictatores, I have already spoken in general terms, those superintendents of wit and learning, men above men, those refined men, minions of the muses, [711]———mentemque habere queis bonam Et esse [712]corculis datum est.———