V I T A. LIFE.

It brought forth a branch. Therefore, the nature of his spirit was not at all unlike the nature of his lineage. From this came his supreme liberty, his patience in labor, his love of truth, his mild and gentle countenance, his remarkable humanity, and all the gifts of spirit familiar and related to noble and illustrious natures. But let us trace the cause of that humanity a little more deeply from Scheckius’s epilogue. Indeed, Ramus says there, when I recall the most laborious course of my past life, I find you less humane, Scheckius, because perhaps you have felt no variety of human life. Truly, to open up our miserable misfortunes to you simply, I confess that my whole life has been tossed about by the bitterest waves. As a boy, barely out of the cradle, I suffered from a double plague; as a young man, with fortune resisting in every way, I came to Paris to take up the liberal arts; then, drawn away from these by the violence of the times, I returned twice, even though the winds were blowing against me, and I was inflamed by a more ardent desire for learning the more I was forbidden. At length, I fell into those sophistries about which I have a contest with you. When I had learned them with the greatest labor, I unlearned them with much greater sorrow, and I taught others, and especially myself, to unlearn them as far as I was allowed. The royal professorship had the invidiousness of this unlearning and teaching to unlearn, which you object to, although it was infamous through the insults of the malicious, testified to by histories that are scarcely credible. A war of evils followed in three civil wars: expulsion from my home, flight from my relatives and friends, the throat-slitting of robbers hanging over our necks, and finally, a struggle regarding my life, reputation, and all my fortunes, the most disgraceful of all. Yet I not only confess that this was a medicine for moderating my spirit, but I even rejoice in it and boast of it. For rightly that Queen of Carthage Dido, referring to Virgil's Aeneid, 1.630: "Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco" (Not unacquainted with woe, I learn to succor the miserable.):

Not unacquainted with woe, I learn to succor the miserable.

But you, Scheckius (unless conjecture fails me), fortune always had in her lap like a little son; no plague, no difficulty or harshness of things, no calamity of any war has exercised you; you were never expelled from your home, never cast out by your own people, never fallen into the traps and hands of robbers, never brought into danger of life, reputation, or goods, so that having polished away the harshness of character, you became easy, kind, and courteous.

Humanity

Elegant antiquity