152 ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [BOOK I?. 



able and wholesome topic ; but the prerogatives of man 

 kind are not hitherto described. Pindar, in his praise of 

 Hiero, says, with his usual elegance, that he cropped the tops 

 of every virtue; and methinks it would greatly contribute 

 to the encouragement and honour of mankind, to have these 

 tops, or utmost extents of human nature, collected from faith 

 ful history : I mean the greatest length whereto human 

 nature of itself has ever gone, in the several endowments of 

 body and mind. Thus it is said of Ca3sar, f that he could 

 dictate to five amanuenses at once. &quot;VVe read, also, of the 

 ancient rhetoricians, as Protagoras and Gorgias ; and of the 

 ancient philosophers, as Callisthenes, Possidonius, and Car- 

 neades, who could with eloquence and copiousness dispute off 

 hand, on either side of an argument, 8 which shows the 

 power of the mind to advantage. So does, also, what Cicero 

 relates of his master Archias, viz., that he could make ex 

 tempore a large number of excellent verses upon the com 

 mon transactions of life. It is a great honour to the memory, 

 that Cyrus or Scipio could call so many thousands of men by 

 their names. 1 Nor are the victories gained in the moral 

 virtues less signal than tliose of the intellectual faculties. 

 &quot;What an example of patience is that of Anaxarchus, who, 

 when put to the torture, bit off his own tongue, and spit it 

 in the tyrant s face ! Nor, to come to our own times, is that 

 a less example of scorn of suffering, which the murderer of 

 the prince of Orange displayed in the midst of his tortures. 

 This Burgimdian, though scourged with iron thongs and torn 

 with red-hot pincers, did not heave a sigh ; and when a broken 

 fragment of the scaffold fell on the heads of one of the by 

 standers, he, even girt around with flames, could not repress 

 his laughter. We have many instances of great serenity and 

 Composure of mind at the time of death, as particularly in 

 r,he centurion mentioned by Tacitus, who being bid by his 

 ..xecutioner to stretch out his neck, valiantly replied, &quot; I 

 would thou wouldst strike as strongly.&quot; 1 John, duke of 

 Saxony, k whilst playing at chess, received the order for his 



* Pindar, Olymp. i. The triumphs of men, and the summits of 

 uuman nature. f Suetonius s Lit 3. 



Quintilian s Institutes, iii., and Laertius s Lives. 

 Xenophon s Cyroptedia, v. ; and Quintilian s Institutes, xi. 

 1 Annals, xv. G7. 



k Meteren, History of the Civil Wars in Vbe Netherlands. 



