m,
Quam regere imperio res velle."

["'Tis much better quietly to obey than wish to rule."
--Lucretius, V, 1126.]

To which we may add that saying of Cyrus, that no man was fit to rule but
he who in his own worth was of greater value than those he was to govern;
but King Hiero in Xenophon says further, that in the fruition even of
pleasure itself they are in a worse condition than private men; forasmuch
as the opportunities and facility they have of commanding those things at
will takes off from the delight that ordinary folks enjoy:

"Pinguis amor, nimiumque patens, in taedia nobis
Vertitur, et, stomacho dulcis ut esca, nocet."

["Love in excess and too palpable turns to weariness, and, like
sweetmeats to the stomach, is injurious."--Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 25.]

Can we think that the singing boys of the choir take any great delight in
music? the satiety rather renders it troublesome and tedious to them.
Feasts, balls, masquerades and tiltings delight such as but rarely see,
and desire to see, them; but having been frequently at such
entertainments, the relish of them grows flat and insipid. Nor do women
so much delight those who make a common practice of the sport. He who
will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true
pleasure of drinking. Farces and tumbling tricks are pleasant to the
spectators, but a wearisome toil to those by whom they are performed.
And that this is so, we see that princes divert themselves sometimes in
disguising their quality, awhile to depose themselves, and to stoop to
the poor and ordinary way of living of the meanest of their people.

"Plerumque gratae divitibus vices
Mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum
Coenae, sine aulaeis et ostro,
Soliicitam explicuere frontem."

["The rich are often pleased with variety; and the plain supper in a
poor cottage, without tapestry and purple, has relaxed the anxious
brow."--Horace, Od., iii. 29, 13.]

Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance. What appetite would
not be baffled to see three hundred women at its mercy, as the grand
signor has in his seraglio? And, of his ancestors what fruition or taste
of sport did he reserve to himself, who never went hawking without seven
thousand falconers? And besides all this, I fancy that this lustre of
grandeur brings with it no little disturbance