Ambitious
meteors! how willing they are to set themselves upon the wing, and
taking every occasion of drawing upward to the sun, not considering
that they have no more time allowed them for their mounting, than the
short revolution of a day; and that when the light goes from them,
they are of necessity to fall. How much happier is he, (and who he is
I need not say, for there is but one phoenix in an age) who, centering
on himself, remains immoveable, and smiles at the madness of the dance
about him? he possesses the midst, which is the portion of safety and
content. He will not be higher, because he needs it not; but by the
prudence of that choice, he puts it out of fortune's power to throw
him down. It is confest, that if he had not so been born, he might
have been too high for happiness; but not endeavouring to ascend, he
secures the native height of his station from envy, and cannot descend
from what he is, because he depends not on another. What a glorious
character was this once in Rome! I should say, in Athens; when, in the
disturbances of a state as mad as ours, the wise Pomponius transported
all the remaining wisdom and virtue of his country into the sanctuary
of peace and learning. But I would ask the world, (for you, my lord,
are too nearly concerned to judge this cause) whether there may not
yet be found a character of a noble Englishman, equally shining with
that illustrious Roman? Whether I need to name a second Atticus? or
whether the world has not already prevented me, and fixed it there,
without my naming? Not a second, with a _longo sed proximus
intervallo_; not a young Marcellus, flattered by a poet into the
resemblance of the first, with a _frons laeta parum, et dejecto lumina
vultu_, and the rest that follows, _si qua fata aspera rumpas, tu
Marcellus eris_; but a person of the same stamp and magnitude, who
owes nothing to the former, besides the word Roman, and the
superstition of reverence, devolving on him by the precedency of
eighteen hundred years; one who walks by him with equal paces, and
shares the eyes of beholders with him; one who had been first, had he
first lived; and, in spite of doating veneration, is still his equal:
both of them born of noble families, in unhappy ages of change and
tumult; both of them retiring from affairs of state; yet not leaving
the commonwealth, till it had left itself; but never returning to
public business, when they had once quitted it, though courted by the
heads of either party.
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