rious
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 no