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This is told us in an amusing letter of Seneca's, who also gives a description of the bath in the villa of the elder Scipio at Liternum, which consisted of a single room without a window, and was supplied with water which was often thick after rain. "Nesciit vivere," says Seneca, in ironical allusion to the luxury of his own day.
"And the water, you perceive, was changed into wine; not into cocoa or lemonade. That conveys, if I am not mistaken, rather a suggestive implication." "I have been pursuing Seneca's letters. He was a cocoa-drinker, masquerading as an ancient. An objectionable hypocrite! I wish people would read Seneca instead of talking about him."
Whether Shakespeare could or could not have written these reflections, without having read Seneca's De Clementia, whether, if he could not conceive the ideas "out of his own head," he might not hear Seneca's words translated in a sermon, or in conversation, or read them cited in an English book, each reader must decide for himself.
Sacheverell's Speech. Fielding's Tryal. Seneca's Morals. Taylor's holy Living and Dying. La ferte's Instructions for Country Dances. Leonora was formerly a celebrated Beauty, and is still a very lovely Woman. She has been a Widow for two or three Years, and being unfortunate in her first Marriage, has taken a Resolution never to venture upon a second.
In other words, its value lay not in its results, but simply in the intellectual activity; and therefore it concerned not mankind at large but a few chosen individuals who, doomed to live in a miserable world, could thus deliver their souls from slavery. For Seneca's belief in the theory of degeneration and the hopeless corruption of the race is uncompromising.
Should I attempt to follow the other more moderate, united, and regular style, I should never attain to it; and though the short round periods of Sallust best suit with my humour, yet I find Caesar much grander and harder to imitate; and though my inclination would rather prompt me to imitate Seneca's way of writing, yet I do nevertheless more esteem that of Plutarch.
I have seen that he has no want. Any one may despise all things, but no one can possess all things. The shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches. But our Demetrius lives not as though he despised all things, but as though he simply suffered others to possess them." These habits and sentiments throw considerable light on Seneca's character.
In the end of the year 1620 he promises his brother to send him his observations on Seneca's Tragedies: These he had written at Vossius's desire . He acknowledges his conjectures are sometimes very bold; but is not so attached to them, but he will submit them to Vossius, and leaves them entirely to him. We have seen that Du Maurier employed his best offices for Barnevelt and Grotius.
Seneca's ideal man is not Jesus, for Jesus is Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Hercules, Adonis, think of this beautiful young god's death! Buddha. Such a mock trial and death could not have taken place under the Roman or Jewish laws. The sacraments derive from the Greeks, from the Indians the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, from the Haoma sacrifice of the Persians, originally Brahmanic.
It accords with the amusing comparison of Malebranche, that Seneca's composition, with its perpetual and futile recurrences, calls up to him the image of a dancer who ends where he begins. But Caius did not confine himself to clever and malignant criticism.
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