Palaestra stili Latini Author:Benjamin Hall Kennedy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: no men are so free from the temptations of iniquity. They live by what they can get by industry from the earth ; and others by what they can catch by craft from ... more »men. They live upon an estate given them by their mother; and others upon an estate cheated from their brethren. They live, like sheep and kine, by the allowances of nature ; and others, like wolves and foxes, by the acquisitions of rapine.— Cowley. 86. Self-obligation.—That which you want, says Plato, borrow it of yourself. And why may I not as well give to myself as lend ? If I may be angry with myself, I may thank myself; and if I may chide myself, I may commend myself, and do myself good as well as hurt. There is the same reason of contraries. It is a common thing to say, Such a man has done himself an injury. If an injury, why not a benefit? But I say that no man can be a debtor to himself: for the benefit must needs go before the acknowledgment ; and a debtor can no more be without a creditor than a husband without a wife. Somebody must give, that somebody may receive; and it is neither giving nor receiving, to pass a thing from one hand to the other. 87. The Informer.—Nerva, the emperor, succeeded Domitian, who had been tyrannical; and in his time many noble houses were overthrown by false accusations, the instruments whereof were chiefly Marcellus and Regulus. The emperor Nerva one night supped privately with some six or seven, amongst whom there was one that was a dangerous man, and began to take the like courses that Marcellus and Regulus had done. The emperor fell into discourse of the injustice and tyranny of the former time, and, by name, of the two accusers; and said, What should we do with them, if we had them now? One of them that was at supper, and was a free-spoken senator, said, Marry, they should ...« less