od men will place you among the miserable;

do they not evidently confirm to us what the philosophers say of riches
and other external good things, that without virtue they are fruitless
and unprofitable enjoyments?

Now thus to accommodate and reconcile poetry to the doctrines of
philosophy strips it of its fabulous and personated parts, and makes
those things which it delivers usefully to acquire also the reputation
of gravity; and over and above, it inclines the soul of a young man to
receive the impressions of philosophical precepts. For he will hereby be
enabled to come to them not altogether destitute of some sort of relish
of them, not as to things that he has heard nothing of before, nor with
an head confusedly full of the false notions which he hath sucked in
from the daily tattle of his mother and nurse,--yea, sometimes too of
his father and pedant,--who have been wont to speak of rich men as the
happy men and mention them always with honor, and to express themselves
concerning death and pain with horror, and to look on virtue without
riches and glory as a thing of nought and not to be desired. Whence it
comes to pass, that when such youths first do hear things of a quite
contrary nature from philosophers, they are surprised with a kind of
amazement, trouble, and stupid astonishment, which makes them afraid to
entertain or endure them, except they be dealt with as those who come
out of very great darkness into the light of the bright sun, that is,
be first accustomed for a while to behold those doctrines in fabulous
authors, as in a kind of false light, which hath but a moderate
brightness and is easy to be looked on and borne without disturbance to
the weak sight. For having before heard or read from poets such things
as these are,--

Mourn one's birth, as the entrance of all ills;
But joy at death, as that which finishes misery;

Of worldly things a mortal needs but two;
A drink of water and the gift of Ceres:

O tyranny, to barbarous nations dear!

This in all human happiness is chief,
To know as little as we can of grief;

they are the less disturbed and offended when they hear from
philosophers that no man ought to be overconcerned about death; that
riches are limited to the necessities of nature; that the happiness of
man's life doth not consist in the abundance of wealth or vastness
of employments or height of authority and power, but in freedom from
sorrow, i