gale, which sits fair to convey thee to the port of the Muses and land thee at the Academy. This Plato did, after he made shipwreck of the friendship of Diogenes. And indeed it highly conduceth to the tranquillity of the mind, to look back upon illustrious men and see with what temper they have borne their calamities. For instance, doth it trouble thee that thou wantest children? Consider that kings of the Romans have died without them,—had kingdoms to leave, but no heirs. Doth poverty and low condition afflict thee? It is put to thy option, wouldst thou not rather of all the Boeotians be Epaminondas, and of all the Romans Fabricius? But thy bed is violated, and thy wife is an adulteress. Didst thou never read this inscription at Delphi?— Here am I set by Agis’ royal hand, Who both the earth and ocean did command. And yet did the report never arrive thee that Alcibiades debauched this king’s wife, Timaea?—and that she herself whispered archly to her maids, that the child was not the genuine offspring of her husband, but a young Alcibiades? Yet this did not obstruct the glory of the man; for, notwithstanding his being a cuckold, he was the greatest and most famous among the Greeks. Nor did the dissolute manners of his daughter hinder Stilpo from enlivening his humor and being the jolliest philosopher of his time; for when Metrocles upbraided him with it, he asked him whether he was the offender or his mad girl. He answered, that it was her sin but his misfortune. To which Stilpo replied: But are not sins lapses? No doubt of it, saith Metrocles. And is not that properly called lapse, when we fall off from the attainment of those things we were in the pursuit of? He could not deny it. He pursued him further with this question: And are not these unlucky traverses misfortunes to them who are thus disappointed? Thus by a pleasant and philosophical reasoning he turned the discourse, and showed the Cynic that his calumny was idle and he barked in vain. 7. But there are some whom not only the evil dispositions of their friends and domestics, but those of their enemies, give disturbance to. For a proneness to speak evil of another, anger, envy, ill-nature, a jealous and perverse temper, are the pests of those who are infected with them. And these serve only to trouble and exasperate fools, like the brawls of scolding neighbors, the peevishness of our acquaintance, and the iniquity or want of qualifications in those who administer the government. But thou seemest to me to be especially concerned with affairs of this nature; for, like the physicians mentioned by Sophocles,— Who bitter choler cleanse and scour With drugs as bitter and as sour,—