Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he receive, and sometimes answer both too as impertinently! He never sets his foot beyond his threshold, unless, like a funeral, he have a train to follow him; as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir, till the bearers were all ready. My life (says Horace, speaking to one of these magnificos) is a great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market, and cheapen what I please, without being wondered at; and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum, without being missed.1 ‘Tis an unpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation, and censure of others; as there may be vanity in it, so, methinks, there should be vexation too of spirit: and I wonder how princes can endure to have two or three hundred men stand gazing on them whilst they are at dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater and more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants; but even this too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will be a servant to them (as many men are, ) the trouble and care of yours in the government of them all is much more than that of every one of them in their observance of you. I take the profession of a schoolmaster to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a commonwealth; yet certainly all his fasces and tyrannical authority over so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs. I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of greatness: I shake out a few of their outward chains; their anger, hatred, 1A free translation of part of Horace’s Satire, Book I. vi. jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the et catera of their passions, which are the secret, but constant, tyrants and torturers of their life, I omit here, b…