Complete.

A GENTLEMAN of my country, who was very often tormented with the gout, being importun’d by his physicians totally to reclaim his appetite from all manner of salt meats, was wont presently to reply that he must needs have some thing to quarrel with in the extremity of his fits, and that he fancy’d that railing at and cursing one while the Bolognia sawsages, and another the dry’d tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. And in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it fail of meeting with that upon which it was design’d to discharge the blow, and spends it self in vain, does offend the striker himself; and as also, that to make a pleasant prospect the sight should not be lost and dilated in a vast extent of empty air, but have some bounds to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable distance:—

  So it appears that the soul being transported and discompos’d, turns its violence upon it self, if not supply’d with some thing to oppose it, and therefore always requires an enemy as an object on which to discharge its fury and resentment. Plutarch says very well of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part which is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge, and create one frivolous and false; as we see that the soul in the exercise of its passions inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own relief, than not to have something to work upon. And after this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth even execute their revenge upon themselves, for the injury they have receiv’d from another.

  What causes of the misadventures that befall us do we not invent? What is it that we do not lay the fault to right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? Those beautiful tresses, young lady, you may so liberally tear off, are no way guilty, nor is it the whiteness of those delicate breasts you so unmercifully beat, that with an unlucky bullet has slain your beloved brother: quarrel with something else. Livy, Dec. 3, l. 5., speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says that for the loss of two brothers, who were both great captains, “Flere omnes repente, et offensare capita,” that they all wept, and tore their hair. ’Tis the common practice of affliction. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handfuls pull’d his hair off his head for sorrow, “Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?” Who has not seen peevish gamesters worry the cards with their teeth, and swallow whole bales of dice in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes whipp’d the sea, and writ a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employ’d a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the river Gnidus, for the fright it had put him into in passing over; and Caligula demolish’d a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his mother had once enjoy’d there. I remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that one of our neighbouring kings having receiv’d a blow from the hand of God, swore he would be reveng’d, and in order to it, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should pray to him, or so much as mention him throughout his dominions; by which we are not so much to take measure of the folly, as the vainglory of the nation of which this tale was told. They are vices that, indeed, always go together; but such actions as these have in them more of presumption than want of wit. Augustus Cæsar, having been tost with a tempest at sea, fell to defying Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be reveng’d, depos’d his statue from the place it had amongst the other deities. Wherein he was less excusable than the former, and less than he was afterwards, when having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in Germany, in rage and despair he went running his head against the walls, and crying out, O Varus! give me my men again! for this exceeds all folly, forasmuch as impiety is joined with it, invading God himself, or at least Fortune, as if she had ears that were subject to our batteries; like the Thracians, who, when it thunders, or lightens, fall to shooting against heaven with Titanian madness, as if by flights of arrows they intended to reduce God Almighty to reason. Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us,

  But we can never enough decry nor sufficiently condemn the senseless and ridiculous sallies of our unruly passions.