this syllable sounded so unpleasantly in their eares, and this voice seemed so ill boding and unluckie, the Romans had learned to allay and dilate the same by a Periphrasis.  In liew of saying, he is dead, or he hath ended his daies, they would say, he hath lived.  So it be life, be it past or no, they are comforted:  from whom we have borrowed our phrases quondam, alias, or late such a one.  It may haply be, as the common saying is, the time we live is worth the mony we pay for it.  I was borne betweene eleven of the clocke and noone, the last of Februarie 1533, according to our computation, the yeare beginning the first of Januarie.  It is but a fortnight since I was 39 yeares old.  I want at least as much more.  If in the meane time I should trouble my thoughts with a matter so farre from me, it were but folly.  But what? we see both young and old to leave their life after one selfe-same condition.  No man departs otherwise from it, than if he but now came to it, seeing there is no man so crazed,[Footnote:  Infirm] bedrell, [Footnote:  Bedridden.] or decrepit, so long as he remembers Methusalem, but thinkes he may yet live twentie yeares.  Moreover, seely [Footnote:  Simple, weak.] creature as thou art, who hath limited the end of thy daies?  Happily thou presumest upon physitians reports.  Rather consider the effect and experience.  By the common course of things long since thou livest by extraordinarie favour.  Thou hast alreadie over-past the ordinarie tearmes of common life:  And to prove it, remember but thy acquaintances, and tell me how many more of them have died before they came to thy age, than have either attained or outgone the same:  yea, and of those that through renoune have ennobled their life, if thou but register them, I will lay a wager, I will finde more that have died before they came to five and thirty years, than after.  It is consonant with reason and pietie, to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ, who ended his humane life at three and thirtie yeares.  The greatest man that ever was, being no more than a man, I meane Alexander the Great, ended his dayes, and died also of that age.  How many severall meanes and waies hath death to surprise us!

     Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis
     Cautum est in horas
     [Footnote:  Hor. 1. ii.  Od. xiii. 13.]

     A man can never take good heed,
     Hourely what he may shun and speed.

I omit to speak of agues and pleurisies; who would ever have imagined that a Duke of Brittanie should have beene stifled to death in a throng of people, as whilome was a neighbour of mine at Lyons, when Pope Clement made his entrance there?  Hast thou not seene one of our late Kings slaine in the middest of his sports? and one of his ancestors die miserably by the chocke [Footnote:  Shock.] of an hog?  Eschilus fore threatned by the fall of an house, when he stood most upon his guard, strucken dead by the fall of a tortoise shell, which fell out of the tallants