[Footnote 21: It will be observed that the main biographical facts about
the life of Seneca are to be gleaned from his letters to Lucilius, who
was his constant friend from youth to old age, and to whom he has
dedicated his Natural Questions. Lucilius was a procurator of Sicily, a
man of cultivated taste and high principle. He was the author of a poem
on Aetna, which in the opinion of many competent judges is the poem
which has come down to us, and has been attributed to Varus, Virgil, and
others. It has been admirably edited by Mr. Munro. (See _Nat. Quaest._,
iv. _ad init. Ep_. lxxix.) He also wrote a poem on the fountain
Arethusa. _(Nat. Quaest_. iii, 26.)]

This passage will furnish us with an excellent example of Seneca's
invariable method of improving every occasion and circumstance into an
opportunity for a philosophic harangue.

By this wife, who died shortly before Seneca's banishment to Corsica, he
had two sons, one of whom expired in the arms and amid the kisses of
Helvia less than a month before Seneca's departure for Corsica. To the
other, whose name was Marcus, he makes the following pleasant allusion.
After urging his mother Helvia to find consolation in the devotion of
his brothers Gallio and Mela, he adds, "From these turn your eyes also
on your grandsons--to Marcus, that most charming little boy, in sight of
whom no melancholy can last long. No misfortune in the breast of any one
can have been so great or so recent as not to be soothed by his
caresses. Whose tears would not his mirth repress? whose mind would not
his prattling loose from the pressure of anxiety? whom will not that
joyous manner of his incline to jesting? whose attention, even though he
be fixed in thought, will not be attracted and absorbed by that
childlike garrulity of which no one can grow tired? God grant that he