De opt. Rege Jacobo.--It was a great accumulation to His Majesty's
deserved praise that men might openly visit and pity those whom his
greatest prisons had at any time received or his laws condemned.
De Princ. adjunctis.--Sed vere prudens haud concipi possit Princeps,
nisi simul et bonus.--Lycurgus.--Sylla.--Lysander.--Cyrus.--Wise is
rather the attribute of a prince than learned or good. The learned
man profits others rather than himself; the good man rather himself
than others; but the prince commands others, and doth himself.
The wise Lycurgus gave no law but what himself kept. Sylla and
Lysander did not so; the one living extremely dissolute himself,
enforced frugality by the laws; the other permitted those licenses
to others which himself abstained from. But the prince's prudence
is his chief art and safety. In his counsels and deliberations he
foresees the future times: in the equity of his judgment he hath
remembrance of the past, and knowledge of what is to be done or
avoided for the present. Hence the Persians gave out their Cyrus to
have been nursed by a bitch, a creature to encounter it, as of
sagacity to seek out good; showing that wisdom may accompany
fortitude, or it leaves to be, and puts on the name of rashness.
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