how popular and courteous, how they
grin and fleer upon every man they meet; with what feasting and inviting,
how they spend themselves and their fortunes, in seeking that many times,
which they had much better be without; as [1818]Cyneas the orator told
Pyrrhus: with what waking nights, painful hours, anxious thoughts, and
bitterness of mind, _inter spemque metumque_, distracted and tired, they
consume the interim of their time. There can be no greater plague for the
present. If they do obtain their suit, which with such cost and solicitude
they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin,
for they are never satisfied, _nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant_, their
thoughts, actions, endeavours are all for sovereignty and honour, like
[1819]Lues Sforza that huffing Duke of Milan, "a man of singular wisdom,
but profound ambition, born to his own, and to the destruction of Italy,"
though it be to their own ruin, and friends' undoing, they will contend,
they may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a
squirrel in a chain, so [1820]Budaeus compares them; [1821]they climb and
climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top. A
knight would be a baronet, and then a lord, and then a viscount, and then
an earl, &c.; a doctor, a dean, and then a bishop; from tribune to praetor;
from bailiff to major; first this office, and then that; as Pyrrhus in
[1822]Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africa, and then Asia,
and swell with Aesop's frog so long, till in the end they burst, or come
down with Sejanus, _ad Gemonias scalas_, and break their own necks; or as
Evangelus the piper in Lucian, that blew his pipe so long, till he fell
down dead. If he chance to miss, and have a canvass, he is in a hell on the
other side; so dejected, that he is ready to hang himself, turn heretic,
Turk, or traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he rails,
swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders: and for his own part,
_si appetitum explere non potest, furore corripitur_; if he cannot satisfy
his desire (as [1823]Bodine writes) he runs mad. So that both ways, hit or
miss, he is distracted so long as his ambition lasts, he can look for no
other but anxiety and care, discontent and grief in the meantime,
[1824]madness itself, or violent death in the end. The event of this is
common to be seen in populous cities, or in princes' courts, for a
courtier's life (as Budaeus d