ed, always go together; but such actions as
these have in them more of presumption than want of wit. Augustus
Caesar, having been tost with a tempest at sea, fell to defying
Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be reveng'd,
depos'd his statue from the place it had amongst the other deities.
Wherein he was less excusable than the former, and less than he was
afterward, when having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in
Germany, in rage and despair he went running his head against the
walls, and crying out, O Varus! give me my men again! for this exceeds
all folly, for as much as impiety is joined with it, invading God
himself, or at least Fortune, as if she had ears that were subject to
our batteries; like the Thracians, who, when it thunders, or lightens,
fall to shooting against heaven with Titanian madness, as if by
flights of arrows they intended to reduce God Almighty to reason. Tho
the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us,

"We must not quarrel heaven in our affairs."

But we can never enough decry nor sufficiently condemn the senseless
and ridiculous sallies of our unruly passions.

V

THAT MEN ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL AFTER DEATH[23]

Every one is acquainted with the story of King Croesus to this
purpose, who being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemn'd to
die, as he was going to execution, cry'd out, "O Solon, Solon!" which
being presently reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire what it
meant, Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the
advertisement Solon had formerly given him true to his cost, which
was, "That men, however fortune may smile upon them, could never be
said to be happy, till they had been seen to pass over the last day
of their lives, by reason of the uncertainty and mutability of human
things, which upon very light and trivial occasions are subject to be
totally chang'd into a quite contrary condition."

[Footnote 23: The translation of Cotton, before it was revised by
Hazlitt.]

And therefore it was, that Agesilaus made answer to one that was
saying, "What a happy young man the King of Persia was to come so
young to so mighty a kingdom." "'Tis true [said he], but neither was
Priam unhappy at his years." In a short time, of kings of Macedon,
successors to that mighty Alexander, were made joyners and scriveners
at Rome; of a tyrant of Sicily, a pedant at Corinth; of a conqueror of
one-half of the world, and general of so many