IX. SILENT SADNESS.

TWO captains on the same side in our civil wars, discoursing together, one of them (with small cause and without any measure) did intolerably boast of his personal performances, as if he had been of the quorum in all considerable actions; at last, not ashamed of, but weaned with his own loquacity, he desired the other captain to relate what service he had done in these wars; to whom he returned, “Other men can tell you of that.”

We meet with many, living at the sign of the Royalist, who much brag of their passive services (I mean their sufferings) in the late war. But that spoke in the wheel which creaketh most doth not bear the greatest burden in the cart. The loudest criers are not always the largest losers.

How much hath Sir John Stowel lost? How many new gentlemen have started up out of the estate of that ancient knight? What hath the Lord Craven lost? Whether more, or more unjustly, hard to decide? Others can tell of their and many other men’s sufferings, whilst they themselves hold their peace.

Here we dare not speak of him who, though the greatest loser of all, speaketh nothing of himself; and therefore his silence putteth a greater 195obligation on us, both to pity him here on earth, and pray for him to Heaven.