Academical discourses upon several choice and pleasant subjects / written by the learned and famous Loredano ; Englished by J.B.

XVIII. Wherefore great Men ordinarily do not favour vertuous Per∣sons reduced to necessity.

VVE are necessitated to have the protection of great Men, be∣cause Jove ever has his thunder-bolts in hand.

And great Men do not succour the Miseries of the virtuous, because they can∣not be perswaded, that a virtuous person can be reduced to Poverty. He only is poor that is ignorant. Virtue has domi∣nion over all, nothing is placed so high, either by the hands of power, or fortune, which virtue cannot reach a 1.1 Quae homi∣nes arant, navigant, aedificant, virtute omnia Parent. He is sufficiently rich that de∣sires nothing; poverty consisting not in the want of money, but in the poorness of the mind, and desires. He therefore

that is virtuous cannot be poor, because he desires nothing; that saying of Cicero being indubitable: Vertus se ipsa con∣tenta.

Poverty is not believed to be with any virtuous person, and therefore not assisted by great men. Nor do they act without reason in this, because Poverty and Vertue are incompatible.

Ut vera dicat Pauperi non creditur.

Sayes, Menander (b) and else where,

Inest aegeno, quod fidem, non invenit, Licet Sapiens sit.

Virtue which payes the tribute of Ob∣sequiousness to none but its own self, is not subject to any necessity. It hath no need but of it self, because it enjoys all the things which is possesses, and desires not those things which it hath not.

No new acquired thing can alter▪ its gusto, because it bends its desires only to∣wards the contemplation of its own beauty. Quaeris quare virtus nullo egeat. Praesentibus gaudet, non concupiscit absentia: nihil illi magnum est, quia satis. There∣fore tis with reason that great Men do* 1.2

not succour vertuous persons, when they are poor, because being such, they cannot believe them to be virtuous.

Admire the wisedome of great Men, with reason do they believe themselves to be the Images of God on Earth. They do not relieve the virtuous, because if the virtuous were not poor, they would not be virtuous: Poverty being the schoole and teacher of all things, whereby the souls of Men, are instructed in all manner of virtue. Necessitas says Plutarch, omnia docuit, and Arcesila••s, paupertas est virtatis gymnasium, He that hath wealth is em∣ployed to keep and secure it, and all that time it Robs him from himself and virtue; Divites propter divitias magnis occupationibus detimetur. How many are hindred from study more by Riches than by Poverty, said one: Quod enim putas, propter abun∣dantiam potius, quam in opiam prohibere à studio litterarum! Do you not sèe, added the same Man, that Poverty makes men vir∣tuous, since only the poor, for the most part do become Philosophers. An non vi∣deas pauperrimos ut plurimum Philosophari.

And who knows not that the rich ob∣liged to their imployments, which always respects their wealth, cannot dedicate

and addict the powers of their souls to virtue? Whereas the poor having no o∣ther faculties but those of the soul, rest only upon those. Non vides, sayes the forecited Thaletes, (a) Quod multis nego••iis occupati divites studiis sapientiae vacare ne∣queant; pauper vero nihil habet, quot agat ad Philosophia se convertit.

But whilst I discourse of Poverty. I be∣thought not my self how I displaid the Poverty of my own understanding. I im∣plore your excuse, because treating of Poverty, which is a nothing, being a pri∣vation, I believed I said nothing, and he indeed hath said nothing, who hath spo∣ken ill.

Notes

• a 1.1

  Salut. in Cal.
• * 1.2

  (a) Stob Sermo. Ga.