OCR
48 Erasmus contract a popular odium, to wit, by reason of the great diversity of their life and souls. For what is there at all done among men that is not full of Folly, and that too from fools and to fools? Against which universal practice if any single one shall dare to set up his throat, my advice to him is, that following the example of Timon, he retire into some desart and there enjoy his wisdome to himself. But, to return to my design, what power was it that drew those stony, oken and wild people into Cities, but flattery? For nothing else is signify’d by Amphion and Orpheus’s Harp. What was it that, when the common people of Rome were like to have destroy’d all by their Mutiny, reduc’d them to Obedience? Was it a Philosophical Oration? Least. But a ridiculous and childish Fable, of the Belly and the rest of the Members. And as good success had Themistocles in his of the Fox and Hedghog. What wise man’s Oration could ever have done so much with the people as Sertorius’s invention of his white Hind? Or his ridiculous Emblem of pulling off a Horse’s Tail hair by hair? Or as Lycurgus’s his example of his two Whelps?