Have you then gained nothing in lieu of your supper? Indeed you
have; you have escaped praising a person whom you did not want to
praise, and you have escaped the necessity of tolerating the upstart
impertinence of his menials."
Some parts of this last thought have been so beautifully expressed by
the American poet Lowell that I will conclude this chapter in his words:
"Earth hath her price for what earth gives us;
The beggar is tax'd for a corner to die in;
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrieves us;
We bargain for the graves we lie in:
At the devil's mart are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold,
For a cap and bells our lives we pay.
Bubbles we earn with our whole soul's tasking,
'_Tis only God that is given away,
'Tis only heaven may be had for the asking_."
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS _(continued)_.
Whether any of these great thoughts would have suggested themselves
_spontaneously_ to Epictetus--whether there was an inborn wisdom and
nobleness in the mind of this slave which would have enabled him to
elaborate such views from his own consciousness, we cannot tell; they do
not, however, express _his_ sentiments only, but belong in fact to the
moral teaching of the great Stoic school, in the doctrines of which he
had received instruction.
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