generously in my behalf. To despise riches with Seneca's purse, is to have at once all the advantages of fortune and philosophy.
Quid voyeat dulci nutricula majus alumno?
You are not like H. Guy[1], who, among other excellent pieces of advice gave me this, when I first came to court; to be very moderate and modest in my applications for my friends, and very greedy and importunate when I asked for myself. You call Tully names, to revenge Cato's quarrel; and to revenge Tully's, I am ready to fall foul of Seneca. You churchmen have cried him up for a great saint; and as if you imagined, that to have it believed that he had a month's mind to be a christian, would reflect some honour on christianity, you employed one of those pious frauds, so frequently practised in the days of primitive simplicity, to impose on the world, a pretended correspondence between him and the great apostle of the gentiles[2]. Your partiality in his favour, shall bias me no more, than the pique which Dion Cassius and others show against him. Like
- ↑ Henry Guy, who had been secretary to the treasury during three successive reigns, died February 23, 1710, and left to William Pulteney, esq., late earl of Bath, near forty thousand pounds, with an estate of about five hundred pounds a year; as the latter owns, in his Answer to one Part of a late infamous Libel, &c. published in 1731, p. 39.
- ↑ It consists of thirteen letters, which seemed to St. Jerom and St. Augustin to have been genuine. But du Pin (Nouvelle Bibliothéque des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques, tom. i, p. 24, edit. 1690, 4to.) acknowledges, that they contain nothing worthy of the apostle or philosopher, and have not the least resemblance to the style of either. This is likewise the judgment of the most learned among the modern criticks.
