when doing ill is common, to do but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation.  ’Tis my comfort, that I shall be one of the last who shall be called in question; and whilst the greater offenders are being brought to account, I shall have leisure to amend:  for it would, methinks, be against reason to punish little inconveniences, whilst we are infested with the greater.  As the physician Philotimus said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who he perceived, both by his complexion and his breath, had an ulcer in his lungs:  “Friend, it is not now time to play with your nails.” —­[Plutarch, How we may distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend.]

And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice, nor magistrate who performed his office, no more than there is now, publish I know not what pitiful reformations about cloths, cookery, and law chicanery.  Those are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.  Those others do the same, who insist upon prohibiting particular ways of speaking, dances, and games, to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices.  ’Tis no time to bathe and cleanse one’s self, when one is seized by a violent fever; it was for the Spartans alone to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they were just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their life.

For my part, I have that worse custom, that if my slipper go awry, I let my shirt and my cloak do so too; I scorn to mend myself by halves.

When I am in a bad plight, I fasten upon the mischief; I abandon myself through despair; I let myself go towards the precipice, and, as they say, “throw the helve after the hatchet”; I am obstinate in growing worse, and think myself no longer worth my own care; I am either well or ill throughout.  ’T is a favour to me, that the desolation of this kingdom falls out in the desolation of my age:  I better suffer that my ill be multiplied, than if my well had been disturbed.—­[That, being ill, I should grow worse, than that, being well, I should grow ill.]—­The words I utter in mishap are words of anger:  my courage sets up its bristles, instead of letting them down; and, contrary to others, I am more devout in good than in evil fortune, according to the precept of Xenophon, if not according to his reason; and am more ready to turn up my eyes to heaven to return thanks, than to crave.  I am more solicitous to improve my health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick; prosperities are the same discipline and instruction to me that adversities and rods are to others.  As if good fortune were a thing inconsistent with good conscience, men never grow good but in evil fortune.  Good fortune is to me a singular spur to modesty and moderation:  an entreaty wins, a threat checks me; favour makes me bend, fear stiffens me.