50

THE VERY PURSUIT OF PLEASURE IS PLEASANT.

sive delight, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance whatever. This delight, for being more gay, more sinewy, more robust, and more manly, is only to be more seriously voluptuous, and we ought to give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more benign, gentle, and natural, and not that of vigour, from which we have derived it; the other more mean and sensual part of pleasure, if it could deserve this fair name, it ought to be upon the account of concurrence, and not of privilege; I find it less exempt from traverses and inconveniences, than vertue it self; and besides that, the enjoyment is more momentary, fluid, and frail; it has its watchings, fasts, and labours, even to sweat and blood; and moreover, has particular to it self so many several sorts of sharp and wounding passions, and so stupid a satiety attending it, as are equal to the severest penance. And we mistake to think that difficulties should serve it for a spur, and a seasoning to its sweetness, as in nature one contrary is quickened by another, and to say when we come to vertue, that like consequences and difficulties overwhelm and render it austere and inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly than in voluptuousness, they enable, sharpen, and heighten the perfect and divine pleasure they procure us. He renders himself unworthy of it who will counterpoise his expence with the fruit, and does neither understand the blessing, nor how to use it. Those who preach to us, that the quest of it is craggy, difficult, and painful, but the fruition pleasant and grateful, what do they mean by that but to tell us that it is always unpleasing? The most perfect have been forc'd to content themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only without ever possessing it. But they are deceiv'd, and do not take notice, that of all the pleasures we know, the very pursuit is pleasant. The attempt ever relishes of the quality of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part of, and consubstantial with the effect. The felicity and beatitude that glitters in vertue, shines throughout all her apartments and avenues, even to the first entry, and utmost pale and limits. Now of all the benefits that vertue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easie tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct; which is the reason why all the rules by which we are to live, centre and concur in this one article. And altho they all in like manner with one consent endeavour to teach us also to despise grief, poverty, and other accidents to which human life by its own nature and constitution, is subjected, it is not nevertheless with the same importunity, as well by reason the fore-named accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some without sorrow or sickness as Xenophilus the musician, who liv'd a hundred and six years in perfect and continual health; as also because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short, and put an end to all these inconveniences. But as to death, it is inevitable.

Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Sors exitura, nos in æternum

Versatur urna; serius, ocyus
Exilium impositura Cymbæ.-
Horat. l. 2. Od. 3.

We all are to one voyage bound; by turn,
Sooner or later, all must to the urn:

When Charon calls aboard we must not stay,
But to eternal exile sail away.

And consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a perpetual torment, and for which there is no consolation nor redress. There is no way by which we can possibly avoid it, it commands all points of the compass; we may continually turn our heads this way and that, and pry about as in a suspected country, “quæ quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendet."- Cicero de finib. l. 1., "but it, like Tantalus his stone, hangs over us." Our courts of justice oftens end back condemn'd criminals to be executed upon the place where the fact was committed, but carry them to all fine houses by the way, and prepare for them the best entertainment you can, Dulcem elaborabunt saporem : Somnum reducent.

do

-non Sicula dapes

Non avium, citharæque cantus

you

Hor. l. 3. Od. I.

the tasts of such as these

Choicest Sicilian dainties cannot please,

Nor yet of birds, or harps the harmonies

Once charm asleep, or close their watchful eyes.

think they could relish it? and that the fatal end of their journey being continually before their eyes, would not alter and deprave their palate from tasting these regalio's ?

Audit iter numeratque dies spatioque viarum
Metitur vitam, torquetur peste futura.-Claud.

He time and space computes, by length of ways
Sums up the number of his few sad days,
And his sad thoughts full of his fatal doom,
Can dream of nothing but the blow to come.

The end of our race is death, 'tis the necessary object of our aim, which if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of an ague? The remedy the vulgar use, is not to think on't but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail.

Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro.—Lucret. l. 4.
He who the order of his steps has laid

To light and natural motion retrograde,

'tis no wonder if he be often trap'd in the pitfall. They use to fright people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it were the name of the devil; and because the making a mans will is in reference to dying, not a man will be perswaded to take a pen in hand to that purpose, till the physician has pass'd sentence upon him, and totally given him over, and then betwixt grief and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of understanding he is to do it. The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death was observ'd to be so harsh to the ears of the people, and the sound so ominous; had found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing bluntly, such a one is dead, to say, such a one has liv'd or such a one has ceas'd to live; for, provided there was any mention

52

MOST MEN DIE BEFORE THEIR THIRTY-FIFTH YEAR.

of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation.
And from them it is that we have borrow'd our expression of the late
Monsieur such and such a one. Peradventure (as the saying is) the
term we have liv'd is worth our money. I was born betwixt eleven and
twelve o'clock in the forenoon the last day of February 1533, according
to our computation, beginning the year the first of January, and it is now
but just fifteen days since I was compleat nine and thirty years old; I
make account to live at least as many more. In the mean time, to
trouble a mans self with the thought of a thing so far of, is a senseless
foolery. But what? Young and old die after the very same manner,
and no one departs out of life otherwise, than if he had but just before
enter'd into it; neither is any so old and decrepid, who has heard of
Methusalem, that does not think he has yet twenty years of constitution
good at least. Fool that thou art, who has assur'd unto thee the term
of life? Thou dependest upon physicians tales and stories, but rather
consult experience, and the fragility of human nature: for, according
to the common course of things, 'tis long since that thou liv'dst by ex-
traordinary favour. Thou hast already out-liv'd the ordinary term of
life, and that it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have
died before they arriv'd at thy age, than have attain'd unto it, and of
those who have ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an ac-
count, and I dare lay a wager, thou wilt find more who have dyed be-
fore than after five and thirty years of age. It is full both of reason and
piety too, to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ himself, who
ended his life at three and thirty years. The greatest man, that ever
was no more than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age.
many several ways has death to surprize us?

Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas.-Hor. l. 2. Od. 13.

Man fain would shun, but 'tis not in his power
T' evade the dangers of each threatning hour.

How

To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagin'd that a Duke of Britanny should be pressed to death in a crow'd, as that Duke was at the entry of Pope Clement into Lyons? Have we not seen one of our Kings kill'd at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by the justle of a hog? Eschylus, being threatned with the fall of a house, was to much purpose so circumspect to avoid that danger, when he was knocked o'th' head by a tortoise-shell falling out of an eagles talons in the fields. Another was choak'd with a grape-stone: an Emperour kill'd with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. Æmilius Lepidus, with a stumble at his own threshold, and Aufidius with a justle against the door, as he entered the council chamber. And betwixt the very thighs of women, Cornelius Gallus the prætor, Tigillinus captain of the watch at Rome, Ludovico son of Guido de Gonzaga Marquis of Mantua, and (of worse example) Speusippus, a Platonick philosopher, and one of our Popes. The poor judge Bebius, whilst he repriv'd a criminal for eight days only, was himself condemn'd to death, and his own day of life was expir'd. Whilst Caius Julius the physician was anointing the eyes of a patient, death clos'd his own; and if I may bring * Henry II. of France, running against Montgomery. 2. Philip the eldest son of Lewis the Gross, the 40th King of France.

in an example of my own bloud; a brother of mine, Captain St. Martin, a young man, of three and twenty years old, who had already given sufficient testimony of his valour, playing a match at tennis, receiv'd a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, though it was without any manner of sign of wound, or depression of the skull, and though he took no great notice of it, nor so much as sate down to repose himself, he nevertheless died within five or six hours after, of an apoplexy occasion'd by that blow. Which so frequent and common examples passing every day before our eyes, how is it possible a man should disengage himself from the thought of death; or avoid fansying that it has us every moment by the collar? What matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to pass, provided a man does not terrifie him self with the expectation? For my part, I am of this mind, that if a man could by any means avoid it, though by creeping under a calves skin, I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift: all I aim at is to pass my time pleasantly, and without any great reproach, and th recreations that most contribute to it, I take hold of, as to the rest, a little glorious and exemplary as you would desire.

prætulerim delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectant mala me, vel deniq; fallant,
Quàm sapere, et ringi. Horace, Epist. 2, l. 2.
A fool, or coward, let me censur'd be,

Whilst either vice does please, or cozen me,

Rather, than be thought wise, and feel the smart

Of a perpetual aking, anxious heart.

But 'tis folly to think of doing any thing that way. They go, they come, they gallop and dance, and not a word of death. All this is very fine, but withall, when it comes either to themselves, their wives, their children, or friends, surprising them at unawares, and unprepar'd, then what torment, what outcries, what madness and despair! Did you ever see any thing so subdu'd, so chang'd and so confounded? A man must therefore make more early tryal of it; and this brutish negligence, could it possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I think utterly impossible) sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy that could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of cowardize it self to that effect: but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as well flying, and playing the poltroon, as standing to't like a man of honour.

Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum, Nec parcit imbellis juventæ
Poplitibus timidoque tergo.-Hor. l. 3. Ode 2.

No speed of foot prevents death of his prize,
He cuts the hamstrings of the man that flies;
Nor spares the tender stripling's back does start
T' out-run the distance of his mortal dart.

And seeing that no temper of arms is of proof to secure us,
Shell thee with steel or brass, advis'd by dread

Death from the casque will pull thy cautious head. let us learn bravely to stand ur ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his

54 EVERMORE KEEP THE FRAIL CONDITION OF LIFE IN VIEW.

novelty and strangeness, let us converse, and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death; let us upon occasions represent him in all his most dreadful shapes to our imagination ; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the lest prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to our selves, well, and what if it had been death it self? and thereupon let us encourage and fortifie our selves. Let us evermore amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering our selves to be so far transported with our delight, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caus'd a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to their guests.

Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,

Grata superveniet, quæ non sperabitur hora.-Horat. l. 1. Epist. 4.
Think every day, soon as the day is past,

Of thy life's date, that thou hast liv'd the last ;
The next day's joyful light thine eyes shall see,
As unexpected, will more welcome be.

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us every where look for him. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; who has learnt to die has forgot to serve. There is nothing of evil in life, for him who rightly comprehends, that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus Æmilius answer'd him whom the miserable king of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, "Let him make that request to himself." In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard for art and industry to perform any thing to purpose. I am in my own nature not melancholy, but thoughtful; and there is nothing I have more continually entertain'd my self withall, than the imaginations of death, even in the gayest and most wanton time of my age.

Jucundum cum ætas florida ver ageret.-Catullus. Num. 69.
Of florid age in the most pleasant spring.

In the company of ladies, and in the height of mirth, some have perhaps thought me possess'd with some jealousie, or meditating upon the uncertainty of some imagin'd hope, whilst I was entertaining my self with the remembrance of some one surpriz'd a few days before with a burning fever of which he died returning from an entertainment like this with his head full of idle fancies of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that for ought I knew the same destiny was attending me. Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit.—Lucret. l. 3.

But now he had a being amongst men,

Now gone, and ne'er to be recall'd agen.

Yet did not this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any other. It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such imaginations as these at first; but with often revolving them in a man's mind, and having them frequent in our thoughts, they at last become so familiar