“At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura.”

     ["But thou, Catullus, be obstinately firm.”—­Catullus, viii. 19.]

I am seldom called to it, and as seldom offer myself uncalled; liberty and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me, are qualities diametrically contrary to that trade.  We cannot well distinguish the faculties of men; they have divisions and limits hard and delicate to choose; to conclude from the discreet conduct of a private life a capacity for the management of public affairs is to conclude ill; a man may govern himself well who cannot govern others so, and compose Essays who could not work effects:  men there may be who can order a siege well, who would ill marshal a battle; who can speak well in private, who would ill harangue a people or a prince; nay, ’tis peradventure rather a testimony in him who can do the one that he cannot do the other, than otherwise.  I find that elevated souls are not much more proper for mean things than mean souls are for high ones.  Could it be imagined that Socrates should have administered occasion of laughter, at the expense of his own reputation, to the Athenians for:  having never been able to sum up the votes of his tribe, to deliver it to the council?  Truly, the veneration I have for the perfections of this great man deserves that his fortune should furnish, for the excuse of my principal imperfections, so magnificent an example.  Our sufficiency is cut out into small parcels; mine has no latitude, and is also very contemptible in number.  Saturninus, to those who had conferred upon him the command in chief:  “Companions,” said he, “you have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general.”

Whoever boasts, in so sick a time as this, to employ a true and sincere virtue in the world’s service, either knows not what it is, opinions growing corrupt with manners (and, in truth, to hear them describe it, to hear the most of them glorify themselves in their deportments, and lay down their rules; instead of painting virtue, they paint pure vice and injustice, and so represent it false in the education of princes); or if he does know it, boasts unjustly and let him say what he will, does a thousand things of which his own conscience must necessarily accuse him.  I should willingly take Seneca’s word on the experience he made upon the like occasion, provided he would deal sincerely with me.  The most honourable mark of goodness in such a necessity is freely to confess both one’s own faults and those of others; with the power of its virtue to stay one’s inclination towards evil; unwillingly to follow this propension; to hope better, to desire better.  I perceive that in these divisions wherein we are involved in France, every one labours to defend his cause; but even the very best of them with dissimulation and disguise:  he who would write roundly of the true state of the quarrel, would write rashly and wrongly.  The most just party is at best but a member of a