not the variety of the world chances, for his meditation hath travelled over them, and his eye, mounted upon his understanding, seeth them as things underneath.  He covers not his body with delicacies, nor excuseth these delicacies by his body, but teacheth it, since it is not able to defend its own imbecility, to show or suffer.  He licenseth not his weakness to wear fate, but knowing reason to be no idle gift of nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny.  Truth is the goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like her.  He knows the condition of the world, that he must act one thing like another, and then another.  To these he carries his desires, and not his desires him, and sticks not fast by the way (for that contentment is repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction, he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element.  He doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her.  He is no gamester of the world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of scum.  Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion.  When he is more particular, he is the wise man’s friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious.  Thus time goeth not from him, but with him; and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than the weakness of his body.  Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters, and help him out of prison.

AN OLD MAN

Is a thing that hath been a man in his days.  Old men are to be known blindfolded, for their talk is as terrible as their resemblance.  They praise their own times as vehemently as if they would sell them.  They become wrinkled with frowning and facing youth; they admire their old customs, even to the eating of red herring and going wetshod.  They cast the thumb under the girdle, gravity; and because they can hardly smell at all their posies are under their girdles.  They count it an ornament of speech to close the period with a cough; and it is venerable (they say) to spend time in wiping their drivelled beards.  Their discourse is unanswerable, by reason of their obstinacy; their speech is much, though little to the purpose.  Truths and lies pass with an unequal affirmation; for their memories several are won into one receptacle, and so they come out with one sense.  They teach their servants their duties with as much scorn and tyranny as some people teach their dogs to fetch.  Their envy is one of their diseases.  They put off and on their clothes with that certainty, as if they knew their heads would not direct them, and therefore custom should.  They take a pride in halting and going stiffly, and therefore their staves are carved and tipped; they trust their attire with much of their gravity; and they dare not go without a gown in summer.  Their hats are brushed, to draw men’s eyes off from their faces; but of all, their pomanders are worn to most purpose, for their putrified breath ought not to want either a smell to defend or a dog to excuse.