Oblivion is not to be hired.  The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.  Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century.  The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live.  The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the equinox?  Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment.  And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes[4]; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

[Footnote 4:  According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted wax candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.]

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings.  We slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us.  Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves.  To weep into stones are fables.  Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity.  To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.  A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.  Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again.  Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend the return of their souls.  But all was vanity, feeding the wind and folly.  The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth.  Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams....