Our studies and desires should sometime be sensible of age; yet we have one foot in the grave and still our appetites and pursuits spring every day anew within us: 

                   “Tu secanda marmora
                    Locas sub ipsum funus, et, sepulcri
                    Immemor, struis domos.”

["You against the time of death have marble cut for use, and,
forgetful of the tomb, build houses.”—­Horace, Od., ii. 18, 17.]

The longest of my designs is not of above a year’s extent; I think of nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new hopes and enterprises; take my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess myself of what I have.

          “Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur....
          plus superest viatici quam viae.”

["Henceforward I will neither lose, nor expect to get:  I have more wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go.” (Or):  “Hitherto nothing of me has been lost or gained; more remains to pay the way than there is way.”—­Seneca, Ep., 77. (The sense seems to be that so far he had met his expenses, but that for the future he was likely to have more than he required.)]

          “Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.”

     ["I have lived and finished the career Fortune placed before me.” 
     —­AEneid, iv. 653.]

’Tis indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it mortifies in me several cares and desires wherewith my life has been disturbed; the care how the world goes, the care of riches, of grandeur, of knowledge, of health, of myself.  There are men who are learning to speak at a time when they should learn to be silent for ever.  A man may always study, but he must not always go to school what a contemptible thing is an old Abecedarian!—­[Seneca, Ep. 36]

              “Diversos diversa juvant; non omnibus annis
               Omnia conveniunt.”

["Various things delight various men; all things are not
for all ages.”—­Gall., Eleg., i. 104.]

If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present condition, that we may answer as he did, who being asked to what end he studied in his decrepit age, “that I may go out better,” said he, “and at greater ease.”  Such a study was that of the younger Cato, feeling his end approach, and which he met with in Plato’s Discourse of the Eternity of the Soul:  not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before furnished with all sorts of provision for such a departure; for of assurance, an established will and instruction, he had more than Plato had in all his writings; his knowledge and courage were in this respect above philosophy; he applied himself to this study, not for the service of his death; but, as a man whose sleeps were never disturbed in the importance of such a deliberation, he also, without choice or change, continued his studies with the other accustomary actions of his life.  The night that he was denied the praetorship he spent in play; that wherein he was to die he spent in reading.  The loss either of life or of office was all one to him.