_Non Dindymene, non adytis quatit_ _Mentem sacerdotum incota Pythius,_ _Non Liber æque, non acuta_ _Sic geminant Corybantes æra,_ _Tristes ut inæ.--_ HOR. lib. i. Ode xvi. 5. Yet O! remember, nor the god of wine, Nor Pythian Phœbus from his inmost shrine, Nor Dindymene, nor her priests possest, Can with their sounding cymbals shake the breast, Like furious anger. FRANCIS. The maxim which Periander of Corinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, left as a memorial of his knowledge and benevolence, was χολου κρατει, _Be master of thy anger_. He considered anger as the great disturber of human life, the chief enemy both of publick happiness and private tranquillity, and thought that he could not lay on posterity a stronger obligation to reverence his memory, than by leaving them a salutary caution against this outrageous passion. To what latitude Periander might extend the word, the brevity of his precept will scarce allow us to conjecture. From anger, in its full import, protracted into malevolence, and exerted in revenge, arise, indeed, many of the evils to which the life of man is exposed. By anger operating upon power are produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the massacre of nations, and all those dreadful and astonishing calamities which fill the histories of the world, and which could not be read at any distant point of time, when the passions stand neutral, and every motive and principle is left to its natural force, without some doubt of the truth of the relation, did we not see the same causes still tending to the same effects, and only acting with less vigour for want of the same concurrent opportunities. But this gigantick and enormous species of anger falls not properly under the animadversion of a writer, whose chief end is the regulation of common life, and whose precepts are to recommend themselves by their general use. Nor is this essay intended to expose the tragical or fatal effects even of private malignity. The anger which I propose now for my subject, is such as makes those who indulge it more troublesome than formidable, and ranks them rather with hornets and wasps, than with basilisks and lions. I have, therefore, prefixed a motto, which characterizes this passion, not so much by the mischief that it causes, as by the noise that it utters.