correct these spendthrifts and prodigal sons, enforce idle persons to work,
drive drunkards off the alehouse, repress thieves, visit corrupt and
tyrannizing magistrates, &c. But as L. Licinius taxed Timolaus, you may us.
These are vain, absurd and ridiculous wishes not to be hoped: all must be
as it is, [599]Bocchalinus may cite commonwealths to come before Apollo,
and seek to reform the world itself by commissioners, but there is no
remedy, it may not be redressed, _desinent homines tum demum stultescere
quando esse desinent_, so long as they can wag their beards, they will play
the knaves and fools.

Because, therefore, it is a thing so difficult, impossible, and far beyond
Hercules labours to be performed; let them be rude, stupid, ignorant,
incult, _lapis super lapidem sedeat_, and as the [600]apologist will,
_resp. tussi, et graveolentia laboret, mundus vitio_, let them be barbarous
as they are, let them [601]tyrannise, epicurise, oppress, luxuriate,
consume themselves with factions, superstitions, lawsuits, wars and
contentions, live in riot, poverty, want, misery; rebel, wallow as so many
swine in their own dung, with Ulysses' companions, _stultos jubeo esse
libenter_. I will yet, to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine
own, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will
freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And
why may I not?--[602]_Pictoribus atque poetis_, &c. You know what liberty
poets ever had, and besides, my predecessor Democritus was a politician, a
recorder of Abdera, a law maker as some say; and why may not I presume so
much as he did? Howsoever I will adventure. For the site, if you will needs
urge me to it, I am not fully resolved, it may be in _Terra Australi
Incognita_, there is room enough (for of my knowledge neither that hungry
Spaniard, [603]nor Mercurius Britannicus, have yet discovered half of it)
or else one of these floating islands in Mare del Zur, which like the
Cyanian isles in the Euxine sea, alter their place, and are accessible only