. We are all hollow and empty; 'tis not with wind and voice
that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair
us: a man starving with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to
provide himself with a gay garment than with a good meal: we are to look
after that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinary
prayers:

"Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus."

We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essential
qualities: exterior ornaments should, be looked after when we have made
provision for necessary things. Divinity treats amply and more
pertinently of this subject, but I am not much versed in it.

Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of the
contempt of glory; and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there was
none more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds from
the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of
many very hurtful treasons in it. There is nothing that so poisons
princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain
credit and favour with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made use
of to corrupt the chastity of women as to wheedle and entertain them with
their own praises. The first charm the Syrens made use of to allure
Ulysses is of this nature:

"Deca vers nous, deca, o tres-louable Ulysse,
Et le plus grand honneur don't la Grece fleurisse."

["Come hither to us, O admirable Ulysses, come hither, thou greatest
ornament and pride of Greece."--Homer, Odysseus, xii. 184.]

These philosophers said, that all the glory of the world was not worth an
understanding man's holding out his finger to obtain it:

"Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est?"

["What is glory, be it as glorious as it may be, if it be no more
than glory?"--Juvenal, Sat., vii. 81.]

I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities along with
it, for which it may justly be desired: it acquires us good-will, and
renders us less subject and exposed to insult and offence from others,
and the like. It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus;
for this precept of his sect, Conceal thy life, that forbids men to
encumber themselves with public negotiations and offices, also
necessarily presupposes a contempt of glory, which is the world's
approbation of those actions we prod