And that is just _Volumnia's_ view of the subject, as will be seen in another place.
Now, this no more dishonors you at all, Than to take in a town with gentle words, Which else would put you to your fortune, and The hazard of much blood.-- And you will rather show our general louts How you can frown, than spend a _fawn_ upon them, For the inheritance of their loves, and _safeguard_ Of _what that want might ruin_.
But then, in the dramatic exhibition, the other side comes in too:--
I will not do't; Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body's action, teach my mind _A most inherent baseness._
It is the same poet who says in another place:--
Almost my nature is subdued to that it works in.
'But to return,' as our author himself says, after his complimentary notice of the king's book, accompanied with that emphatic promise to give an account of himself upon a full occasion, and we have here, apparently, a longer digression to apologize for, and return from; but, in the book we are considering, it is, in fact, rather apparent than real, as are most of the author's digressions, and casual introductions of impertinent matter; for, in fact, the exterior order of the discourse is often a submission to the _occasion_, and is not so essential as the author's apparent concern about it would lead us to infer; indeed he has left dispersed directions to have this treatise broken up, and recomposed in a more lively manner, upon a full occasion, and when time shall serve; for, at present, this too is chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof.
And in marking out the grounds in human life, then lying waste, or covered with superstitious and empirical arts and inventions, in merely showing the fields into which the inventor of this new instrument of observation and inference by rule, was then proposing to introduce it, and in presenting this new report, and this so startling proposition, in those differing aspects and shifting lights, and under those various divisions which the art of delivery and tradition under such circumstances appeared to prescribe; having come, in the order of his report, to that main ground of the good which the will and appetite of man aspires to, and the direction thereto,--this so labored ground of philosophy,--when it was found that the new scientific platform of good, included--not the exclusive good of the individual form only, but that of those 'larger wholes,' of which men are _constitutionally_ parts and members, and the special DUTY,--for that is the specific name of this principle of integrity in the _human_ kind, that is the name of that larger law, that spiritual principle, which informs and claims the parts, and conserves the larger form which is the worthier,--when it was found that this part included the particular duty of every man in his _place, vocation_, and _profession_, as well as the common duty of men as men, surely it was natural enough to glance here, at that _particular profession and vocation_ of authorship, and the claims of the respective _places_ of _king_ and _subject_ in that regard, as well as at the _duty_ of the _king_, and the superior advantages of a government of laws in general, as being more in accordance with the order of nature, than that other mode of government referred to. It was natural enough, since this subject lies always in abeyance, and is essentially involved in the work throughout, that it should be touched here, in its proper place, though never so casually, with a glance at those nice questions of conflicting claims, which are more fully debated elsewhere, distinguishing that which is forced in _time_, from that which is forced in _truth_, and the absence of the person, from the absence of the occasion.