as to be no trouble at all: otherwise, I for my part should be in a
perpetual fright and frenzy ; for never man was so distrustful of his life,
never man so indifferent for its duration. Neither health, which I
have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and vigorous, and very seldom
interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract my hopes. Methinks
I scape every minute, and it eternally runs in my mind, that what may
be done to morrow may be done to day. Hazards and dangers do, in
truth, little or nothing hasten our end; and if we consider how many
more remain and hang over our heads, besides the accident that im-
mediately threatens us, we shall find that the sound and the sick, those
that are abroad at sea, and those that sit by the fire, those who are
engag'd in battle, and those who sit idle at home, are the one as near it as
the other: "Nemo altero fragilior est : nemo in crastinum sui certior,—”
Senec. Ep. 19.
"No man is more frail than another: no more certain
of the morrow." For any thing I have to do before I die, the longest
leisure would appear too short, were it but an hours business I had to
do. A friend of mine the other day turning over my table-book, found
in it a memorandum of something I would have done after my decease,
whereupon I told him, as it was really true, that though I was no more
than a league's distance only from my own house, and merry and well,
yet when that thing came into my head; I made haste to write it down
there, because I was not certain to live till I came home. As a man
that am eternally brooding over my own thoughts, and who confine
them to my own particular concerns, I am upon the matter at all hours
as well prepar'd as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall
come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before.
We should always (as near as we can) be booted and spurr'd, and
ready to go, and above all things to take care at that time to have no
business with any one but a man's self :

Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo multa ?-Hor. l. 2.; Od. 16.
Why cut'st thou out such mighty work, vain man,
Whose life's short date's compriz'd in one poor span ?

For we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition; one complains, more than of death, that he is thereby prevented of a glorious victory; another that he must die before he has married his daughter, or settled, and provided for his children; a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his beloved wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son, as the principal concerns of his being. For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please him, without any manner of regret. I disengage my self throughout from all worldly relations, my leave is soon taken of all but my self. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and purely, and to shake hands with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best.

-miser, O miser, (aiunt) omnia ademit

Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ.—Lucret. l. 3.
Wretch that I am (they cry) one fatal day

So many joys of life has snatch'd away.

And the builder,

56

TEACH MEN HOW TO DIE AND HOW TO LIVE.

-manent (dit il.) opera interrupta, minæque

Murorum ingentes, æquataque machina cœlo.—Æneid. 1. 4.
Stupendious piles (say he) neglected lie,

And tow'rs whose pinacles do pierce the sky.

A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or at least with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action.

Cum moriar medium solvar et inter opus.—Ovid. Amor. lib. 2. Eleg.
When death shall come, he me will doubtless find

Doing of something that I had design'd.

I would always have a man to be doing, and as much as in him lies, to extend, and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting cabbages, but without any careful thought of him, and much less of my garden's not being finished. I saw one die, who at his last gasp seem'd to be concern'd at nothing so much, as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle history he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or fixteenth of our Kings.

Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum

Jam desiderium rerum, superinsidet una.—Lucret. l. 3.
They tell us not that dying we've no more

The same desires and thoughts that heretofore.

We are to discharge our selves from these vulgar and hurtful humours and concerns. To this purpose it was, that men first appointed the places of sepulture, and dormitories of the dead, near adjoyning to the churches, and in the most frequent places of the city, to accustom (says Lycurgus) the common people, women and children, that they should not be startled at the sight of a dead corpse ; and to the end, that the continual objects of bones, graves, monuments, and funeral obsequies should put us in mind of our frail condition.

And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the company with a great image of death, by one that cry'd out to them, drink and be merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead; so it is my custom to have death not only in my imagination, but continually in my mouth; neither is there any thing of which I am so inquisitive, and delight to inform my self, as the manner of mens deaths, their words, looks, and gestures; nor any places in history I am so intent upon; and it is manifest enough, by my crowding in examples of this kind, that I have a particular fancy for that subject. If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register with a comment of the various deaths of men, and it could not but be useful, for who should teach men to die, would at the same time teach men to live. Dicearchus made one, to which he gave that title; but it was design'd for another, and less profitable end. Peradventure some one may object, and say, that the pain and terror of dying indeed does so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes to the push: but let them say what they will, to premeditate is doubtless a very great advantage; and besides, is it nothing to come so far, at least, without any visible disturbance or alteration? But moreover, nature her self does assist and encourage us. If the death

be sudden and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I find, that as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing, and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution of dying when I am well in health than when sick languishing of a fever; and by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by reason I even begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look upon death with less terror and amazement; which makes me hope, that the further I remove from the first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall soon strike a bargain, and with less unwillingness exchange the one for the other. And, as I have experimented in other occurrences, that, as Cæsar says, things often appear greater to us at a distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had diseases in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigour wherein I now am, and the jollity and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that by imagination I magnifie and make those inconveniences twice greater than they are, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me, and I hope to find death the same. Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations our constitutions daily suffer, how nature deprives us of all sight and sense of our bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the vigour of his youth and better days?

Heu senibus vitæ portio quanta manet?—

Corn. Galli. vel potius Maximian. Eleg. 1.

Alas, to men, of youthful heat bereft,

How small a portion of their life is left?

Cæsar, to an old weather-beaten souldier of his guards, who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his wither'd body, and decrepid motion, pleasantly answer'd, "thou fansiest then that thou art yet alive." Should a man fall into the aches and impotencies of age, from a sprightly and vigorous youth on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of enduring such a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easie, and as it were, an insensible pace, step by step conducts us to that miserable condition, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we perceive not, nor are sensible of the stroak then, when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death, than the final dissolution of a languishing body, which is only the death of old age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasie being to none at all, as it is from a spritely and florid being to one that is unwieldy and painful. The body, when bow'd beyond its natural spring of strength, has less force either to rise with, or support a burthen ; and it is with the soul the same, and therefore it is, that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the power of this adversary: for as it is impossible she should ever be at rest, or at peace within her self, whilst she stands in fear of it; so if she once can assure her self, she may boast (which is a thing as it were above human condition) that it is impossible that disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance, should inhabit, or have any place in her.

Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida, neque Auster

58

DEATH IS BUT THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER LIFE.

Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ, Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus.
Horat. l. 3, Od. 3.

A soul well settled is not to be shook
With an incensed tyrant's threatening look;
Nor can loud Auster once that heart dismay,
The ruffling prince of stormy Adria;

Nor yet th' advanced hand of mighty Jove;

Though charg'd with thunder, such a temper move.

She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of fortune. Let us therefore, as many of us as can, get this advantage, which is the true and sovereign liberty here on earth, and that fortifies us wherewithal to defie violence and injustice, and to contemn prisons and chains.

in manicis, et

Compedibus, sævo te sub custode tenebo.
Ipse Deus simul atque volam, me solvet, opinor,
Hoc sentit, moriar: mors ultima linea rerum est.
Horat. l. 1. Epist. 16.

Our very religion it self has no surer human foundation than the contempt of death. Not only the argument of reason invites us to it; for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, can never be miss'd or lamented? but also seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo one of them? And what matter is it when it shall happen, since it is once inevitable? To him that told Socrates, “the thirty tyrants have sentenc'd thee to death;" "and nature them,” said he. What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble and afflict our selves, about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all misery and trouble? As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament and take on, that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. So did we weep, and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so did we put of our former veil in entering into it. Nothing can be grievous that is but once, and is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so soon be dispatch'd? Long life and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more. Aristotle tells us, that there are certain little beasts upon the banks of the river Hypanis, that never live above a day : they which die at eight of the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those that die at five in the evening, in their extreamest age. Which of us would not laugh to see this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal or woe? The most, and the least of ours in comparison of eternity, or yet to the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even of some animals, is no less ridiculous. But nature compels us to it; "go out of this world, says she, as you entered into it; the same pass you made from death to life, without passion or fear, the same, after the same manner, repeat from life to death." Your death is a part of the order of the universe, 'tis a part of the life of the world.

Inter se mortales mutua vivunt,

Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.—Lucret. l. 2. Mortals amongst themselves by turns do live,

And life's bright torch to the next runner give.*

'Tis the condition of your creation; death is a part of you, and whilst you endeavour to evade it, you avoid your selves. This very being of yours that you now enjoy is equally divided betwixt life and death. The day of your birth is one days advance towards the grave.

Prima, quæ vitam dedit, hora, carpsit.—Senec. Her. fur. chor. 3.
The hour that gave of life the benefit,

Did also a whole hour shorten it.

Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.—Manil. Ast. 4.
As we are born, we die, and our life's end
Upon our life's beginning does depend.

All the whole time you live you purloin from life, and live at the expence of life is felt, the perpetual work of our whole life is but to lay the foundation of death; you are in death whilst you live, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive. Or if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it, go your way satisfied.

Cur non ut plenus vitæ conviva recedis.-Lucret. l. 3.
Why should'st thou not go like a full gorg'd guest,
Sated with life as he is with a feast?

If you have not known how to make the best use of it, and if it was unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it, to what end would you desire longer to keep it?

cur amplius addere quæris (omne?

Rursum quod pereat male et ingratum occidat.—Ibid.

And why renew thy time, to what intent

Live o'er again a life that was ill spent?

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it; and, if you have liv'd a day, you have seen all; one day is equal, and like to all other days; there is no other light, no other shade, this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and revolution of things, is the same your ancestors enjoy'd, and that shall also entertain your posterity.

Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
Aspicient.-Lucret. vel Manit.

Your grandsires saw no other things of old,

Nor shall your nephews other things behold.

And come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy, is performed in a year. If you have observ'd the revolution of the four seasons, they comprehend the infancy, youth, virility, and old age of the world. The year has played his part, and knows no other way, has no new farce, but must begin and repeat the same again; it will always be the same thing.

* Alluding to the Athenian games, wherein those that run a race carried torches in their hands; and the race being done, delivered them into the hands of those who were to run next.