Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 544 pages of information about Literary and Philosophical Essays.

Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 544 pages of information about Literary and Philosophical Essays.

All the time you live, you steale it from death:  it is at her charge.  The continuall worke of your life, is to contrive death:  you are in death, during the time you continue in life:  for, you are after death, when you are no longer living.  Or if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life:  but during life, you are still dying:  and death doth more rudely touch the dying than the dead, and more lively and essentially.  If you have profited by life, you have also beene fed thereby, depart then satisfied.

     Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?
     [Footnote:  Lucret. 1. iii. 982.]

     Why like a full-fed guest,
     Depart you not to rest?

If you have not knowne how to make use of it:  if it were unprofitable to you, what need you care to have lost it to what end would you enjoy it longer?

   —­cur amplius addere quaeris
     Rursum quod pereat male,
     et ingratum occidat omne?
     [Footnote:  Lucret. 1. iii. 989.]

     Why seeke you more to gaine, what must againe
     All perish ill, and passe with griefe or paine?

Life in itselfe is neither good nor evill:  it is the place of good or evill, according as you prepare it for them.  And if you have lived one day, you have seene all:  one day is equal to all other daies.  There is no other light, there is no other night.  This Sunne, this Moone, these Starres, and this disposition, is the very same which your forefathers enjoyed, and which shall also entertaine your posteritie.

     Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
     Aspicient.
     [Footnote:  Manil. i. 523.]

     No other saw our Sires of old,
     No other shall their sonnes behold.

And if the worst happen, the distribution and varietie of all the acts of my comedie, is performed in one yeare.  If you have observed the course of my foure seasons; they containe the infancie, the youth, the viriltie, and the old age of the world.  He hath plaied his part:  he knowes no other wilinesse belonging to it, but to begin againe, it will ever be the same, and no other.

     Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque,
     [Footnote:  Lucret. 1. iii. 123.]

     We still in one place turne about,
     Still there we are, now in, now out.

     Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.
     [Footnote:  Virg.  Georg. 1. ii. 403.]

     The yeare into it selfe is cast
     By those same steps, that it hath past.

I am not purposed to devise you other new sports.

     Nam tibi praterea quod machiner, inveniamque
     Quod placeat nihil est; eadem suni omnia semper.
     [Footnote:  Lucret. 1. ii. 978.]

     Else nothing, that I can devise or frame,
     Can please thee, for all things are still the same.

Make roome for others, as others have done for you.  Equalitie is the chiefe ground-worke of equitie, who can complaine to be comprehended where all are contained?  So may you live long enough, you shall never diminish anything from the time you have to die:  it is bootlesse; so long shall you continue in that state which you feare, as if you had died, being in your swathing-clothes, and when you were sucking.

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Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.