OF GREAT PLACE.                        79

cannot when they would, neither will they when it
were reason ; but are impatient of privateness, even
in age and sickness, which require the shadow;
like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their
street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn.
Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other
men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they
judge by their own feeling they cannot find it; but
if they think with themselves what other men think
of them, and that other men would fain be as they
are, then they are happy, as it were by report;
when, perhaps, they find the contrary within. For
they are the first that find their own griefs, though
they be the last that find their own faults. Certainly,
men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves,
and while they are in the puzzle of business they
have no time to tend their health, either of body
or mind : Illi mors gravis incubat, qui not2is nimis
omnibus^ ignotus moritur sibi. In place there is licence
to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse ; for
in evil the best condition is not to will, the second
not to can. But power to do good Is the true and
lawful end of aspiring ; for good thoughts  (though