Neither health, which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and vigorous, and very seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract my hopes. Every minute, methinks, I am escaping, 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 thousands more remain and hang over our heads, besides the accident that immediately 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 engaged 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."
["No man is more fragile than another: no man more certain than another of to-morrow."--Seneca, Ep., 91.]
For anything I have to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear too short, were it but an hour's business I had to do.
A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found therein 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 confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at all hours as well prepared 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 spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one's self:--"Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo Multa?"
["Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?"--Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.] for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition.
One man 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 educated his children; a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son, as the principal comfort and concern 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 regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, 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 praemia vitae.'"
["'Wretch that I am,' they cry, 'one fatal day has deprived me of all joys of life.'"--Lucretius, iii. 911.]
And the builder, "Manuet," says he, "opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes."
["The works remain incomplete, the tall pinnacles of the walls unmade."--AEneid, iv. 88.]
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:
"Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus."
["When I shall die, let it be doing that I had designed."--Ovid, Amor., ii. 10, 36.
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 my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp, complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings:
"Illud in his rebus non addunt: nec tibi earum jam desiderium rerum super insidet una."
["They do not add, that dying, we have no longer a desire to possess things."--Lucretius, iii. 913.]
We are to discharge ourselves from these vulgar and hurtful humours.
To this purpose it was that men first appointed the places of sepulture adjoining the churches, and in the most frequented 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 corpse, and to the end, that the continual spectacle of bones, graves, and funeral obsequies should put us in mind of our frail condition:
"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."
["It was formerly the custom to enliven banquets with slaughter, and to combine with the repast the dire spectacle of men contending with the sword, the dying in many cases falling upon the cups, and covering the tables with blood."--Silius Italicus, xi. 51.]
And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the company with a great image of death, by one that cried 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 anything of which I am so inquisitive, and delight to inform myself, as the manner of men's deaths, their words, looks, and bearing; 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: he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.
Dicarchus made one, to which he gave that title.; but it was designed for another and less profitable end.