[1793]  ------“Incedit per ignes,
Suppositos cineri doloso,”

------“you incautious tread
On fires, with faithless ashes overhead.”

[1794]old are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions, silicernia, dull of hearing, weak sighted, hoary, wrinkled, harsh, so much altered as that they cannot know their own face in a glass, a burthen to themselves and others, after 70 years, “all is sorrow” (as David hath it), they do not live but linger.  If they be sound, they fear diseases; if sick, weary of their lives:  Non est vivere, sed valere vita. One complains of want, a second of servitude, [1795]another of a secret or incurable disease; of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death of friends, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, [1796] contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt, ingratitude, unkindness, scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life, too many children, no children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, &c.

[1797] “Talia de genere hoc adeo sunt multa, loquacem ut
Delassare valent Fabium.”------

       “But, every various instance to repeat,
        Would tire even Fabius of incessant prate.”

Talking Fabius will be tired before he can tell half of them; they are the subject of whole volumes, and shall (some of them) be more opportunely dilated elsewhere.  In the meantime thus much I may say of them, that generally they crucify the soul of man, [1798]attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies ([1799]_ossa atque pellis est totus, ita curis macet_) they cause tempus foedum et squalidum, cumbersome days, ingrataque tempora, slow, dull, and heavy times:  make us howl, roar, and tear our hairs, as sorrow did in [1800]Cebes’ table, and groan for the very anguish of our souls.  Our hearts fail us as David’s did, Psal. xl. 12, “for innumerable troubles that compassed him;” and we are ready to confess with Hezekiah, Isaiah lviii. 17, “behold, for felicity I had bitter grief;” to weep with Heraclitus, to curse the day of our birth with Jeremy, xx. 14, and our stars with Job:  to hold that axiom of Silenus, [1801]"better never to have been born, and the best next of all, to die quickly:”  or if we must live, to abandon the world, as Timon did; creep into caves and holes, as our anchorites; cast all into the sea, as Crates Thebanus; or as Theombrotus Ambrociato’s 400 auditors, precipitate ourselves to be rid of these miseries.

SUBSECT.  XI.—­Concupiscible Appetite, as Desires, Ambition, Causes.