[Footnote 108: Attentively.]
[Footnote 109: Subjects.]
[Footnote 110: Studies pass into the character.]
[Footnote 111: Hair-splitters.]
OF ADVERSITY.
It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that
"the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the
good things that belong to adversity are to be admired"--_Bona rerum
secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia_. Certainly, if miracles be
the command over Nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a
higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), "It
is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security
of a god "--_Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem dei_.
This would have done better in poesy, where transcendencies are more
allowed; and the poets indeed have been busy with it; for it is in
effect the thing which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient
poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery;[112] nay, and to have
some approach to the state of a Christian; "that Hercules, when he went
to unbind _Prometheus_ (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the
length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher," lively
describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the
flesh through the waves of the world.
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