with all affability, counterfeit honesty and humility. [1815]If that will not serve, if once this humour (as [1816]Cyprian describes it) possess his thirsty soul, ambitionis salsugo ubi bibulam animam possidet, by hook and by crook he will obtain it, and from his hole he will climb to all honours and offices, if it be possible for him to get up, flattering one, bribing another, he will leave no means unessay'd to win all. [1817]It is a wonder to see how slavishly these kind of men subject themselves, when they are about a suit, to every inferior person; what pains they will take, run, ride, cast, plot, countermine, protest and swear, vow, promise, what labours undergo, early up, down late; how obsequious and affable they are, how popular and courteous, how they grin and fleer upon every man they meet; with what feasting and inviting, how they spend themselves and their fortunes, in seeking that many times, which they had much better be without; as [1818]Cyneas the orator told Pyrrhus: with what waking nights, painful hours, anxious thoughts, and bitterness of mind, inter spemque metumque, distracted and tired, they consume the interim of their time. There can be no greater plague for the present. If they do obtain their suit, which with such cost and solicitude they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin, for they are never satisfied, nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant, their thoughts, actions, endeavours are all for sovereignty and honour, like [1819]Lues Sforza that huffing Duke of Milan, a man of singular wisdom, but profound ambition, born to his own, and to the destruction of Italy, though it be to their own ruin, and friends' undoing, they will contend, they may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so [1820]Budaeus compares them; [1821]they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top. A knight would be a baronet, and then a lord, and then a viscount, and then an earl, &c.; a doctor, a dean, and then a bishop; from tribune to praetor; from bailiff to major; first this office, and then that; as Pyrrhus in [1822]Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africa, and then Asia, and swell with Aesop's frog so long, till in the end they burst, or come down with Sejanus, ad Gemonias scalas, and break their own necks; or as Evangelus the piper in Lucian, that blew his pipe so long, till he fell down dead. If he chance to miss, and have a canvass, he is in a hell on the other side; so dejected, that he is ready to hang himself, turn heretic, Turk, or traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he rails, swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders: and for his own part, si appetitum explere non potest, furore corripitur; if he cannot satisfy his desire (as [1823]Bodine writes) he runs mad. So that both ways, hit or miss, he is distracted so long as his ambition lasts, he can look for no other but anxiety and care,