y care
they take to live, to be drudges, to maintain their poor families, their
trouble and anxiety "takes away their sleep," Sirac. xxxi. 1, it makes them
weary of their lives: when they have taken all pains, done their utmost and
honest endeavours, if they be cast behind by sickness, or overtaken with
years, no man pities them, hard-hearted and merciless, uncharitable as they
are, they leave them so distressed, to beg, steal, murmur, and [2265]
rebel, or else starve. The feeling and fear of this misery compelled those
old Romans, whom Menenius Agrippa pacified, to resist their governors:
outlaws, and rebels in most places, to take up seditious arms, and in all
ages hath caused uproars, murmurings, seditions, rebellions, thefts,
murders, mutinies, jars and contentions in every commonwealth: grudging,
repining, complaining, discontent in each private family, because they want
means to live according to their callings, bring up their children, it
breaks their hearts, they cannot do as they would. No greater misery than
for a lord to have a knight's living, a gentleman a yeoman's, not to be
able to live as his birth and place require. Poverty and want are generally
corrosives to all kinds of men, especially to such as have been in good and
flourishing estate, are suddenly distressed, [2266]nobly born, liberally
brought up, and, by some disaster and casualty miserably dejected. For the
rest, as they have base fortunes, so have they base minds correspondent,
like beetles, _e stercore orti, e stercore victus, in stercore delicium_,
as they were obscurely born and bred, so they delight in obscenity; they
are not thoroughly touched with it. _Angustas animas angusto in pectore
versant_. [2267]Yet, that which is no small cause of their torments, if
once they come to be in distress, they are forsaken of their fellows, most
part neglected, and left unto themselves; as poor [2268]Terence in Rome was
by Scipio, Laelius, and Furius, his great and noble friends.

"Nil Publius Scipio profuit, nil ei Laelius, nil Furius,
Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillime,
Horum ille opera ne domum quident habuit conductitiam."[2269]

'Tis generally so, _Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris_, he is left cold
and comfortless, _nullas ad amissas ibit amicus opes_, all flee from him as
from a rotten wall, now ready to fall on their heads. Prov. xix. 1.
"Poverty separates them from their [2270]neighbours."

[2271]