Vobis & famæ me semper dedi, saith Trebellius Pollio, I have wholly consecrated my self to you and fame: ’Tis all my desire, night and day, ’tis all my study to raise my name. Proud Pliny seconds him; Quanquam O! &c. and that vain-glorious Orator, is not ashamed to confess in an Epistle of his to Marcus Lucceius, Ardeo incredibili cupiditate, &c. I burn with an incredible desire, to have my name registred in thy book. Out of this fountain proceed all those cracks and brags,

——speramus carmina fingi Posse linenda cedro, & leni servanda cupresso——

Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna.——nec in terra morabor longius. Nil parvum aut humili modo, nil mortale loquor. Dicar qua violens obstrepit Aufidus.——Exegi monumentum ære perennius.

Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira, nec ignis, &c. cum venit illa dies, &c. parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum (This of Ovid I have paraphrased in English.)

And when I am dead and gone, My corps laid under a stone, My fame shall yet survive, And I shall be alive, In these my works for ever, My glory shall persever, &c.

And that of Ennius,

Nemo me lachrymis decoret, neque funera fletu Faxit, cur? volito docta per ora virum.

With many such proud strains, and foolish flashes too common with Writers. Not so much as Democharis on the Topicks, but he will be immortal: Typotius de fama, shall be famous, and well he deserves, because he writ of fame; and every trivial Poet must be renowned,

——Plausuque petit clarescere vulgi.

This puffing humor it is, that hath produced so many great tomes, built such famous monuments, strong Castles, and Mausolean Tombs, to have their acts eternized, ——Digito monstrari, & dicier hic est; to see their names inscribed, as Phryne on the walls of Thebes, Phryne fecit:

This causeth so many bloody battles, ——Et noctes cogit vigilare serenas; Long journies, Magnum iter intendo, sed dat mihi gloria vires, gaining honor, a little applause. Pride, self-love, Vain-glory.

This is it which makes them take such pains, and break out into those ridiculous strains, this high conceit of themselves, to scorn all others; ridiculoso fastu & intolerando contemptu, as Palæmon the Grammarian contemned Varro, secum & natas & morituras literas jactans, and brings them to that height of insolency, that they cannot indure to be contradicted, or hear of any thing but their own commendation, which Hierom notes of such kinde of men. And as Austin well seconds him, ’tis their sole study day and night to be commended and applauded.

When as indeed, in all wise mens judgments, quibus cor sapit, they are mad, empty vessels, funges, beside themselves, derided, & ut Camelus in proverbio quærens cornua, etiam quas habebat aures amisit, their works are toyes, as an Almanack out of date, authoris pereunt garrulitate sui, they seek fame and immortality, but reap dishonor and infamy, they are a common obloquie, insensati, and come far short of that which they suppose or expect. O puer ut sis vitalis metuo.

Of so many myriades of Poets, Rhetoricians, Philosophers, sophisters, as Eusebius well observes, which have written in former ages, scarce one of a thousands works remaines, nomina & libri simul cum corporibus interierunt, their books and bodies are perished together. It is not as they vainly think, they shall surely be admired and immortal, as one told Philip of Macedon insulting after a victory, that his shadow was no longer than before, we may say to them,

Nos demiramur, sed non cum deside vulgo, Sed velut Harpyas, Gorgonas, & Furias.

We marvail too, not as the vulgar we, But as we Gorgons, Harpy, or Furies see.

Or if we do applaud, honor and admire; quota pars, how small a part in respect of the whole world, never so much as hears our names, how few take notice of us, how slender a Tract, as scant as Alcibiades his land in a Map! And yet every man must and will be immortal, as he hopes, and extend his fame to our Antipodes, when as half, no not a quarter of his own Province or City, neither knows nor hears of him:

but say they did, whats a City to a Kingdom, a Kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world it self that must have an end, if compared to the least visible Star in the Firmament, eighteen times bigger then it? and then if those Stars be infinite, and every Star there be a Sun, as some will, and as this Sun of ours hath his Planets about him, all inhabited; what proportion bear we to them, and wher’s our glory?

Orbem terrarum victor Romanus habebat, as he crackt in Petronius, all the world was under Augustus: and so in Constantines time, Eusebius brags he governed all the world, universum mundum præclarè admodum administravit,——& omnes orbis gentes Imperatori subjecti: so of Alexander it is given out, the 4. Monarchies. &c. when as neither Greeks nor Romans, ever had the fifteenth part of the now known world, nor half of that which was then described.