And in Seneca we see some of the most glowing pictures of the nobility of poverty combined with the most questionable avidity in the pursuit of wealth. Yet how completely did he sell himself for naught. It is the lesson which we see in every conspicuously erring life, and it was illustrated less than three years afterwards in the terrible fate of the tyrant who had driven him to death. For a short period of his life, indeed, Seneca was at the summit of power; yet, courtier as he was, he incurred the hatred, the suspicion, and the punishment of all the three Emperors during whose reigns his manhood was passed. "Of all unsuccessful men," says Mr. Froude, "in every shape, whether divine or human, or devilish, there is none equal to Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways--the fellow with one eye on heaven and one on earth--who sincerely preaches one thing and sincerely does another, and from the intensity of his unreality is unable either to see or feel the contradiction. He is substantially trying to cheat both God and the devil, and is in reality only cheating himself and his neighbours. This of all characters upon the earth appears to us to be the one of which there is no hope at all, a character becoming in these days alarmingly abundant; and the aboundance of which makes us find even in a Reineke an inexpressible relief." And, in point of fact, the inconsistency of Seneca's life was a _conscious_ inconsistency. "To the student," he says, "who professes his wish to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this is my _wish_ also, but I dare not hope it. _I am preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best_, but only _to be better than the bad_." No doubt Seneca meant this to be understood merely for modest depreciation; but it was far truer than he would have liked seriously to confess. He must have often and deeply felt that he was not living in accordance with the light which was in him.