him, in wisdom and knowledge far beyond his predecessors. A.  Dom. 1306. [3614] Uladeslaus Cubitalis that pigmy king of Poland reigned and fought more victorious battles than any of his long-shanked predecessors. Nullam virtus respuit staturam, virtue refuseth no stature, and commonly your great vast bodies, and fine features, are sottish, dull, and leaden spirits.  What’s in them? [3615]_Quid nisi pondus iners stolidaeque ferocia memtis_, What in Osus and Ephialtes (Neptune’s sons in Homer), nine acres long?

[3616] “Qui ut magnus Orion,
        Cum pedes incedit, medii per maxima Nerei
        Stagna, viam findens humero supereminet undas.”

       “Like tall Orion stalking o’er the flood: 
        When with his brawny breast he cuts the waves,
        His shoulder scarce the topmost billow laves.”

What in Maximinus, Ajax, Caligula, and the rest of those great Zanzummins, or gigantical Anakims, heavy, vast, barbarous lubbers?

[3617]  ------“si membra tibi dant grandia Parcae,
Mentis eges?”

Their body, saith [3618]Lemnius, “is a burden to them, and their spirits not so lively, nor they so erect and merry:”  Non est in magno corpore mica salis:  a little diamond is more worth than a rocky mountain:  which made Alexander Aphrodiseus positively conclude, “The lesser, the [3619]wiser, because the soul was more contracted in such a body.”  Let Bodine in his 5. c. method, hist. plead the rest; the lesser they are, as in Asia, Greece, they have generally the finest wits.  And for bodily stature which some so much admire, and goodly presence, ’tis true, to say the best of them, great men are proper, and tall, I grant,—­caput inter nubila condunt, (hide their heads in the clouds); but belli pusilli little men are pretty:  Sed si bellus homo est Cotta, pusillus homo est.  Sickness, diseases, trouble many, but without a cause; [3620]"It may be ’tis for the good of their souls:”  Pars fati fuit, the flesh rebels against the spirit; that which hurts the one, must needs help the other.  Sickness is the mother of modesty, putteth us in mind of our mortality; and when we are in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, she pulleth us by the ear, and maketh us know ourselves. [3621]Pliny calls it, the sum of philosophy, “If we could but perform that in our health, which we promise in our sickness.” Quum infirmi sumus, optimi sumus; [3622]for what sick man (as [3623] Secundus expostulates with Rufus) was ever “lascivious, covetous, or ambitious? he envies no man, admires no man, flatters no man, despiseth no man, listens not after lies and tales,” &c.  And were it not for such gentle remembrances, men would have no moderation of themselves, they would be worse than tigers, wolves, and lions:  who should keep them in awe? “princes, masters, parents, magistrates, judges, friends, enemies, fair or foul means cannot contain us, but a little sickness,” (as [3624]Chrysostom