ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 107 



ness dispute off hand, on either side of an argument,* which 

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

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

 extempore a large number of excellent verses upon the com- 

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

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

 their names.* Nor are the victories gained in the moral vir- 

 tues less signal than those of the intellectual faculties. 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 Burgun- 

 dian, 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 head of one of the bystanders, 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 the centurion mentioned 

 by Tacitus, who being bid by his executioner to stretch out his 

 neck, valiantly replied, " I would thou wouldst strike as strong- 

 ly." t John, duke of Saxony,^ whilst playing at chess, received 

 the order for his execution the following day ; whereupon, 

 turning round to one that stood by him, he said, with a smile, 

 " Judge, whether so far I am not the winner of the game. For 

 as soon as I am dead, he," pointing to his antagonist, " will say 

 that the game was his own." Sir Thomas More, the day before 

 his execution, being waited upon by his barber, to know if he 

 would have his hair off, refused it ; with this answer, that " the 

 king and he had a dispute about his head, and till that were 

 ended he would bestow no cost upon it." And even when he 

 had laid his head upon the block, he raised himself again a lit- 

 tle, and gently putting his long beard aside, said, " This surely 

 has not offended the king." By these examples it will appear 

 that the miracles of human nature, and the utmost powers and 

 faculties, both of mind and body, are what we would have col- 

 lected into a volume, that should be a kind of register of human 

 triumphs. And with regard to such a work, we commend the 

 design of Valerius Maximus and Pliny, but not their care and 

 choice. 

 The doctrine of union, or of the common tie of soul and body, 



