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Moreover, as we have above taught you to abate and lessen the credit of evil and hurtful poems by setting in opposition to them the famous speeches and sentences of such worthy men as have managed public affairs, so will it be useful to us, where we find any things in them of civil and profitable import, to improve and strengthen them by testimonies and proofs taken from philosophers, withal giving these the credit of being the first inventors of them. For this is both just and profitable to be done, seeing by this means such sayings receive an additional strength and esteem, when it appears that what is spoken on the stage or sung to the harp or occurs in a scholar’s lesson is agreeable to the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, and that the sentences of Chilo and Bias tend to the same issue with those that are found in the authors which children read. Therefore must we industriously show them that these poetical sentences, Not these, O daughter, are thy proper cares, Thee milder arts befit, and softer wars; Sweet smiles are thine, and kind endearing charms; To Mars and Pallas leave the deeds of arms; Jove’s angry with thee, when thy unmanaged rage With those that overmatch thee doth engage; Il. V. 428; XI. 513. differ not in substance but bear plainly the same sense with that philosophical sentence, Know thyself. And these, Fools, who by wrong seek to augment their store, And know not how much half than all is more; Of counsel giv’n to mischievous intents, The man that gives it most of all repents; Hesiod, Works and Days, 40 and 266. are of near kin to what we find in the determination of Plato, in his books entitled Gorgias and Concerning the Commonwealth, to wit, that it is worse to do than to suffer injury, and that a man more endamageth himself when he hurts another, than he would be damnified if he were the sufferer. And that of Aeschylus, Cheer up, friend; sorrows, when they highest climb, What they exceed in measure want in time, we must inform them, is but the same famous sentence which is so much admired in Epicurus, that great griefs are but short, and those that are of long continuance are but small. The former clause whereof is that which Aeschylus here saith expressly, and the latter but the consequent of that. For if a great and intense sorrow do not last, then that which doth last is not great nor hard to be borne. And those words of Thespis, Seest not how Jove,—because he cannot lie Nor vaunt nor laugh at impious drollery, And pleasure’s charms are things to him unknown,— Among the Gods wears the imperial crown? wherein differ they from what Plato says, that the divine nature is seated far from both joy and grief? And that saying of Bacchylides, Virtue alone doth lasting honor gain, But men of wretched souls oft wealth attain; and those of Euripides much of the same import, Hence temperance in my esteem excels, Because it constantly with good men dwells; How much soe’er to honor thou aspire, And strive by riches virtue to acquire, Still shall thy lot to good men wretched seem; 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?
