Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently furnishes evidence of extraordinary mental strength while now and then he sinks down in sheer exhaustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole scale of mental experiences; and though he dwell, longest on the higher parts, he does not always do so. The record of such an experience has an attraction for many men. They see in it a counterpart of their own struggles, and are rarely without hope that its triumphs may be an earnest of their own. The scholar in politics is a character of whom we hear a good deal, but as a matter of fact, scholarship, in the true sense of the word, and successful politics, as the world understands success, are a combination that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical statesman, strictly speaking, is an equally rare phenomenon and has been since the days of the supremacy of the Romish church. The greater the success of the ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he departed from the prescriptions of the church, or at least of the Gospel. How often has the experience of Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men, both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shakespeare’s thoughts, if they have not expressed them in his words: “Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies.” We still hope to find a place for the scholar in politics, but we have given up the search so far as the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in Seneca we have a man who had mastered all the knowledge of his time; who was by no means an unsuccessful preacher of righteousness, and who, nevertheless, was a successful courtier and statesman during part of his life. He might have been both to the ending of his days in peace, had it not been his fate to serve one of the worst rulers that ever lived. The secret of his undying fame then is his ability and his whilom position at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the world. It is probable that the cause of his exile, at an age when he had as yet not written very much, so far as we know, was his prominence in a way that was distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While there was nothing in his past life or present conduct to justify putting him to death, his removal from Rome seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his most influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca was not a man calmly to permit his enemies to forget him; nor would his friends suffer him to be forgotten.