106 The Admirable Crichton. 



deliver more heartily than to 3-00, who seem to me to be the 

 most happy of all with whose virtue good fortune has been con- 

 joined, as they say that in ancient times Lysander of Laceda;mon 

 declared concerning Cyrus, King of Persia, when he looked upon 

 the splendour of his body arrayed in purple and adorned with 

 gems and gold. Farewell. 



Given at Genoa on the Ides of July in the year 1579. 



The Oration. 



If, by the authority of this most famous assembly, most 

 Serene Prince and most illustrious Fathers, either your dignity 

 or the consideration of my own honour and the magnitude 

 of your benefits towards me, might have permitted me to 

 retire, I might, on account of my youth and the feeble- 

 ness of my endowments, and my extremely limited faculty 

 of speech, have reasonably declined to encounter the diflficulty of 

 the duty devolving upon me to-day. The fact, however, that I 

 might be extremely distressed by the bitterest sorrow on account 

 of this insignificence of my mental powers, which does not permit 

 me to fulfil your expectation, partly the fear of displeasing you, 

 and partly a sense of my duty that I should not seem ungrateful 

 for the singular favour of the Most Serene Prince and Most 

 Illustrious Senate, have impelled me, hesitating, to persevere in 

 my accepted purpose. 



For it is not possible that I should pass over in silence that 

 incredible and unheard-of kindness, that most shining love of 

 virtue and most tender devotion to strangers, and that supreme 

 sweetness of manner with which I was received on these shores as 

 a shipwrecked man carried thither by fortune together with that 

 most obliging man Hieronymus Mariglanus, and with which the 

 Most Serene Prince and most renowned Order of the Senate, as 

 well as the patricians and whole body of the citizens of Genoa, 

 have admitted me to their hearts. And whereas, on account of 

 the straits and miseries into which I fell a short time before, my 

 adverse experiences of a life of tears and full of sorrow overcame ■ 

 me, you, then, as if there were in me some slight virtue or modi- 

 cum of talent on account of which, although weighed down by 

 such grief and miseries it lay concealed, you wished to befriend 

 me, accorded me an honour which I would not change for the 



