8 THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 



beauty or other gift wherewith they are adorned 

 and graced by nature, without the help of industry, 

 are so far besotted in themselves as that they prove 

 the cause of their own destruction. For it is the 

 property of men infected with this humour not to 

 come much abroad, or to be conversant in civil 

 affairs; specially seeing those that are in public 

 place must of necessity encounter with many con 

 tempts and scorns which may much deject and trou 

 ble their minds ; and therefore they lead for the most 

 part a solitary, private, and obscure life, attended 

 on with a few followers, and those such as will adore 

 and admire them, like an echo, flatter them in all 

 their sayings, and applaud them in all their words ; 

 so that being by this custom seduced and puffed up, 

 and as it were stupified with the admiration of them 

 selves, they are possessed with so strange a sloth and 

 idleness, that they grow in a manner benumbed and 

 defective of all vigour and alacrity. Elegantly doth 

 this flower, appearing in the beginning of the spring, 

 represent the likeness of these men s dispositions, 

 who in their youth do flourish and wax famous ; but 

 being come to ripeness of years, they deceive and 

 frustrate the good hope that is conceived of them. 

 Neither is it impertinent that this flower is said to 

 be consecrated to the infernal deities, because men 

 of this disposition become unprofitable to all human 

 things. For whatsoever produceth no fruit of itself, 

 but passeth and vanisheth as if it never had been, like 

 the way of a ship in the sea, that the ancients were 

 wont to dedicate to the ghosts and powers below. 



