The Essays, vol 18 | Page 8

short in the way wherein I have so
long lived. I am no longer in condition for any great change, nor to put
myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to augmentation. 'Tis
past the time for me to become other than what I am; and as I should
complain of any great good hap that should now befall me, that it came
not in time to be enjoyed:
"Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me to use
it."--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost better
never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
one has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of the
world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all

the prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat,
mustard. I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what
use is knowledge to him who has lost his head? 'Tis an injury and
unkindness in fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us
with a just despite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me
no more; I can no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency,
patience is the most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble
to the chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled
into the deserts of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end
finds itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at an
end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to
authorise it, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will here declare, by
way of example, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution
[Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence, in
France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th December.]
has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
to the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and so
long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained
to be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though
corrective, innovation. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always
pushes me ten days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my
ears: "This rule concerns those who are to begin to be." If health itself,
sweet as it is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret
than possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;
without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should
I make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge
his trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry
they look at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
rebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned into
substance, and fortune into nature.
I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but

withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need
and our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the
blows of Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be
circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be
performed not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of
which the two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.
Actions that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential
reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and
so many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries
them before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
Most of our business is farce:
"Mundus universus exercet histrioniam." --[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
skin from