DEDICATION. 1 13 



and later times, my thoughts, I confess, have chiefly 

 stayed upon three particulars, as the most eminent 

 and the most resembling. All three persons that 

 had held chief place of authority in their countries ; 

 all three ruined, not by war, or by any other disaster, 

 but by justice and sentence, as delinquents and cri 

 minals ; all three famous writers, insomuch as the 

 remembrance of their calamity is now as to posterity 

 but as a little picture of night-work, remaining 

 amongst the fair and excellent tables of their acts 

 and works : and all three, if that were any thing to 

 the matter, fit examples to quench any man s ambi 

 tion of rising again ; for that they were every one of 

 them restored with great glory, but to their farther 

 ruin and destruction, ending in a violent death. The 

 men were, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca ; per 

 sons that I durst not claim affinity with, except the 

 similitude of our fortunes had contracted it. When 

 I had cast mine eyes upon these examples, I was 

 carried on farther to observe, how they did bear their 

 fortunes, and principally, how they did employ their 

 times, being banished, and disabled for public busi 

 ness : to the end that I might learn by them ; and 

 that they might be as well my counsellors as my 

 comforters. Whereupon I happened to note, how 

 diversly their fortunes wrought upon them ; espe 

 cially in that point at which I did most aim, which 

 was the employing of their times and pens. In 

 Cicero, I saw that during his banishment, which was 

 almost two years, he was so softened and dejected, 

 as he wrote nothing but a few womanish epistles. 



VOL. VII. 



