years together made his master vent with one continued and unintermitted
outbursting, and 'tis like will do so till he die of it. And I could
heartily wish, that I only knew by reading, how often a man's belly, by
the denial of one single puff, brings him to the very door of an
exceeding painful death; and that the emperor,--[The Emperor Claudius,
who, however, according to Suetonius (Vita, c. 32), only intended to
authorise this singular privilege by an edict.]--who gave liberty to let
fly in all places, had, at the same time, given us power to do it. But
for our will, in whose behalf we prefer this accusation, with how much
greater probability may we reproach herself with mutiny and sedition, for
her irregularity and disobedience? Does she always will what we would
have her to do? Does she not often will what we forbid her to will, and
that to our manifest prejudice? Does she suffer herself, more than any
of the rest, to be governed and directed by the results of our reason? To
conclude, I should move, in the behalf of the gentleman, my client, it
might be considered, that in this fact, his cause being inseparably and
indistinctly conjoined with an accessory, yet he only is called in
question, and that by arguments and accusations, which cannot be charged
upon the other; whose business, indeed, it is sometimes inopportunely to
invite, but never to refuse, and invite, moreover, after a tacit and
quiet manner; and therefore is the malice and injustice of his accusers
most manifestly apparent. But be it how it will, protesting against the
proceedings of the advocates and judges, nature will, in the meantime,
proceed after her own way, who had done but well, had she endowed this
member with some particular privilege; the author of the sole immortal
work of mortals; a divine work, according to Socrates; and love, the
desire of immortality, and himself an immortal demon.

Some one, perhaps, by such an effect of imagination may have had the good
luck to leave behind him here, the scrofula, which his companion who has