" What an authority is here for the credit of retreat! and
happy had it been for Hannibal if adversity could have taught him as
much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest prosperities.
This would be no wonder if it were as truly as it is colourably and
wittily said by Monsieur de Montaigne, that ambition itself might
teach us to love solitude: there is nothing does so much hate to
have companions. It is true, it loves to have its elbows free, it
detests to have company on either side, but it delights above all
things in a train behind, aye, and ushers, too, before it. But the
greater part of men are so far from the opinion of that noble Roman,
that if they chance at any time to be without company they are like
a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's
breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very
fantastical and contradictory in human nature, that men should love
themselves above all the rest of the world, and yet never endure to
be with themselves. When they are in love with a mistress, all
other persons are importunate and burdensome to them. "Tecum vivere
amem, tecum obeam lubens," They would live and die with her alone.
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