XV
OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES
Shepherds of people had need know the calendars[1] of tempests in state; which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality; as natural tempests are greatest about the Equinoctia. And as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states:
———Ille etiam cascos instare tumultus
Sæpe monet, fraudesque et operta tumescere bella.
[Of troubles imminent and treasons dark
Thence warning comes, and wars in secret gathering. Virgil]
Libels and licentious discourses against the state, when they are frequent and open; and in like sort, false news often running up and down to the disadvantage of the state, and hastily embraced; are amongst the signs of troubles. Virgil, giving the pedigree of Fame, saith she was sister to the Giants:
Illam Terra parens, irâ irritata deorum,
Extremam (ut perhibent) Cæo Enceladoque sororem
Progenuit.
[Her, Parent Earth, furious with the anger of the gods, brought forth, the youngest sister (as they affirm) of Coeus and Enceladus.]
As if fames[2] were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less indeed the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever he noteth it right, that seditious tumults and seditious fames differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, seu bene sen male gesta premunt [when dislike prevails against the government, good actions and bad offend alike]. Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles that the suppressing of them with
