servants receive is after the model of their own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model of their master's fortune. And certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and[1] it were but to roast their eggs;[2] and yet these men many times hold credit with their masters, because their study is but to please them and profit themselves; and for either respect they will abandon the good of their affairs.
Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.[3] But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey[4]) are sui amantes sine rivali,[5] are many
- ↑ And. If.
- ↑ The motive of Lamb's essay, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, turns on the drollery that the art of roasting was discovered in China by the accidental burning of a cottage containing "a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number."
- ↑ "His nature is ever when he would have his prey to cry and sob like a Christian body, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them." Master John Hawkins's Second Voyage. Hakluyt. p. 534. ed. 1598.
"the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers;"
Shakspere. II. King Henry VI. iii. 1. - ↑ Cneius Pompeius Magnus, surnamed 'the Great,' 106–48 B.C. With Caesar and Crassus, Pompey formed the first triumvirate, 60 B.C. He was defeated by Caesar in the battle of Pharsalus, in Thessaly, 48 B.C.
- ↑ Lovers of themselves, without a rival (quam se ipse amans sine rivali). Cicero, Ad Quintum Fratrem. III. 8. 4. The Correspondence of M. Tullius Cicero. Robert Yelverton Tyrrell. Vol. II. p. 194.
