The Epistles of Lucius Annaeus Seneca

pleasure; though I join in condemning those points which he introduced into the Latin style: those eternal witticisms strung like beads together, and that impudent manner of talking to the passions before he has convinced the judgment, which Erasmus original: "Quin ubique plurimus videtur jocorum affectator, etiam in rebus maximè feriis." — Erasmus on Seneca. (Translation: "Indeed, he appears to be a great seeker of witticisms everywhere, even in the most serious matters."), if I remember right, objects to him. He is seldom instructive Perhaps so, to a man of Lord Bolingbroke’s spirit, learning, and knowledge of the world. But I flatter myself that many of a lower class, for whom this work is principally calculated, will, upon a perusal of these sheets (with an humble and well-disposed mind), find and acknowledge their satisfaction, and it may be, improvement, in the best of all knowledge: the knowledge of moral duty., but is perpetually entertaining: and when he gives you no new idea, he reflects your own back upon you with new luster.

In few words, Seneca was a man made for meditation. He was undoubtedly a master of choice thoughts, and he employed the vigor of them upon a most illustrious subject. Beside that, this wandering humor of his (as Mr. Hobbes expresses it) is accompanied with such a wonderful felicity of lively and pertinent reflections, even in the most ordinary occurrences of life; and his applications are so happy that every man reads him over again within himself, and feels and confesses in his own heart the truth of his doctrine. What can be done more toward establishing a right principle? For there is no test of the truth and reason of things like that which carries with it the assent of universal nature. As Seneca was much given to thinking, so he wrote principally for thinking men. The periods that he lays most stress upon are only so many detachments of one select thought from another; and every fresh hint furnishes a new text to work upon. So that reading Seneca, without reading upon him, does but the one half of our business: for his innuendoes are infinitely more instructive than his words at length; and there is no coming at him in those heights without serious reflection.