hour adds unto that current arithmetic which scarce stands one moment.  And since death must be the Lucina[133] of life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions and makes but winter arches, and, therefore, it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness and have our light in ashes.  Since the brother[134] of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time that grows old in itself bids us hope no long duration; diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation....

There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality.  Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end.  All others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself.  But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory.  God, who can only[135] destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration.  Wherein there is so much of chance that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustrations, and to hold long subsistence seems but a scape[136] in oblivion.  But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery[137] in the infamy of his nature.

[Footnote 130:  Injustice.] [Footnote 131:  See Shakspere’s Troilus and Cressida.] [Footnote 132:  That is, bribed, bought off.] [Footnote 133:  The goddess of childbirth.  We must die to be born again.] [Footnote 134:  Sleep.] [Footnote 135:  That is, the only one who can.] [Footnote 136:  Freak.] [Footnote 137:  Ostentation.]

* * * * *

JOHN DRYDEN.

THE CHARACTER OF ZIMRI.[138]

[From Absalom and Achitophel.]

  In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
  A man so various that he seemed to be
  Not one, but all mankind’s epitome: 
  Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
  Was every thing by turns, and nothing long;
  But in the course of one revolving moon
  Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
  Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
  Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking,
  Blest madman, who could every hour employ
  With something new to wish or to enjoy! 
  Railing and praising were his usual themes,
  And both, to show his judgment, in extremes: 
  So over-violent or over-civil
  That every man with him was God or Devil. 
  In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
  Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
  Beggared by fools whom still he found[139] too late,
  He had his jest, and they had his estate.