Harvard Classics, vol 32 | Page 8

in so short hold?
For then we shall have worke sufficient, without any more accrease.
Some man complaineth more that death doth hinder him from the
assured course of an hoped for victorie, than of death it selfe; another
cries out, he should give place to her, before he have married his
daughter, or directed the course of his childrens bringing up; another
bewaileth he must forgoe his wives company; another moaneth the
losse of his children, the chiefest commodities of his being. I am now
by meanes of the mercy of God in such a taking, that without regret or
grieving at any worldly matter, I am prepared to dislodge, whensoever
he shall please to call me: I am every where free: my farewell is soone
taken of all my friends, except of my selfe. No man did ever pre pare
himselfe to quit the world more simply and fully, or more generally
spake of all thoughts of it, than I am assured I shall doe. The deadest
deaths are the best.
--Miser, de miser (aiunt) omnia ademit. Vna dies infesta mihi tot
praemia vitae: [Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 941.]
O wretch, O wretch (friends cry), one day, All joyes of life hath tane
away:
And the builder,
--manent (saith he) opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes.
[Footnote: Virg. Aen. 1. iv. 88.]
The workes unfinisht lie, And walls that threatned hie.
A man should designe nothing so long afore-hand, or at least with such
an intent, as to passionate[Footnote: Long passionately.] himselfe to
see the end of it; we are all borne to be doing.
Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus [Footnote: Ovid. Am. 1. ii. El.
x. 36]
When dying I my selfe shall spend, Ere halfe my businesse come to
end.

I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives offices as
much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I am setting
my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden. I
saw one die, who being at his last gaspe, uncessantly complained
against his destinie, and that death should so unkindly cut him off in the
middest of an historie which he had in hand, and was now come to the
fifteenth or sixteenth of our Kings.
Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum, Iam desiderium rerum
super insidet uno. [Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 44.]
Friends adde not that in this case, now no more Shalt thou desire, or
want things wisht before.
A man should rid himselfe of these vulgar and hurtful humours. Even
as Churchyards were first place adjoyning unto churches, and in the
most frequented places of the City, to enure (as Lycurgus said) the
common people, women and children, not to be skared at the sight of a
dead man, and to the end that continuall spectacle of bones, sculs,
tombes, graves and burials, should forewarne us of our condition, and
fatall end.
Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia caede Mos olim, et miscere epulis
spectacula dira Certantum ferro, saepe et super ipsa cadentum Pocula,
respersis non parco sanguine mensis. [Footnote: Syl. 1. xi. 51]
Nay more, the manner was to welcome guests, And with dire shewes of
slaughter to mix feasts. Of them that fought at sharpe, and with bords
tainted Of them with much bloud, who o'er full cups fainted.
And even as the AEgyptians after their feastings and carousings caused
a great image of death to be brought in and shewed to the guests and
bytanders, by one that cried aloud, "Drinke and be merry, for such shalt
thou be when thou art dead: "So have I learned this custome or lesson,
to have alwaies death, not only in my imagination, but continually in
my mouth. And there is nothing I desire more to be informed of than of
the death of men; that is to say, what words, what countenance, and
what face they shew at their death; and in reading of histories, which I
so attentively observe. It appeareth by the shuffling and hudling
up[Footnote: Collecting] of my examples, I affect[Footnote: Like] no
subject so particularly as this. Were I a composer of books, I would
keepe a register, commented of the divers deaths, which in teaching
men to die, should after teach them to live. Dicearcus made one of that

title, but of another and lesse profitable end. Some man will say to mee,
the effect exceeds the thought so farre, that there is no fence so sure, or
cunning so certaine, but a man shall either lose or forget if he come
once to that point; let them say what they list: to premeditate on it,
giveth no doubt a great advantage: and it is nothing, at the least, to goe
so farre