GREENE'S FAREWELL TO FOLLY 1 Modern spelling tran

GREENE’S FAREWELL TO FOLLY 24
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sun, and was the first that ever made edict to have the feet of emperors kissed in sign of
servile submission. His end was madness. The pride of Pompey was his overthrow. The
desire of kingly title caused Caesar to die in the senate-house. But thy harvest is out of
grass, and my counsel cometh now as a shower of rain doth when the corn is ripe, yet
seeing you are fallen into poverty, let me advise thee how to bear it with patience. Want
is not a deprivation of virtue, but a release of care and trouble. Epaminondas was not
called half a god, no [sic for ‘nor’] Lycurgus a saviour because they abounded in wealth
and were slaves to their passions, but because they were princes, and yet content with
poverty. Then let their lives be a mark whereby to direct your actions, that as you are
fallen from dignity by default, so you may live in poverty with patience, & so die a more
honourable beggar than thou didst live a king. And if thou marvel who it is that gives
thee such friendly counsel, know I am the daughter of Selides, who driven by thy injustice
to this distress, although my father now a king, yet I find such content in poverty as I little
haste to exchange this life with dignity.
Vadislaus carefully marking the weight of every word, especially proceeding from her
whom he had injured, blushed at the sight of her patience, and yet as a man whom despair
had hardened on to mishap, nothing relented at her persuasions, but in a melancholy fury
flung from the door without saying one word, or bidding her farewell. Maesia, noting
still the perverse stomach in the man, said to herself: What folly is there greater than
pride, which neither age nor poverty can extinguish?
What afterward became of Vadislaus, the annals of Buda makes not mention, but only of
this, that he died poor, and yet proud. For Maesia, pitying her father’s sorrows that he
made for her absence, more for his content than for any delight in dignity, shortly after
she forsook the country and went to the court.
Peratio having ended his tale, the whole company commended his discourse, and
especially the old Countess, who not only gave him praise as a laurel for his labours, but
thanks, as due to him by deserts, saying that indeed pride was one of those sins which
nature had framed without change, that fortune was a mistress over other passions and
time had a medicine for other maladies; only pride and the gout hath his [sic for ‘this’?]
similitude in effects, that they were incurable.
Well, madam, quoth Bernardino, Peratio hath done well, but pray God he resemble not
the rich Bishop of Cologne, that preaching against covetousness had a poor man’s lease
to pawn in his hands, which he used as an instrument to act against usury. He is a
scholar, madam, and therefore within the compass of his own conclusions, for we see
those university men overcome themselves deeply in this folly, insomuch that, not content
to be proud at home, they seek by travel to hunt after vanity.
As I cannot, quoth Peratio, excuse myself, so I will not accuse all generally because the
premises are too peremptory that infer such censurers [sic?], but no doubt scholars are
men, and therefore subject to this fault.
Modern spelling transcript copyright 2007 Nina Green All Rights Reserved