in the universal Register of God. I am not yet so Cynical as to approve the Testament of Diogenes;[1] nor do I altogether allow that Rodomontado[2] of Lucan,
Cælo tegitur, qui non habet urnam.
He that unburied lies wants not his Herse,
For unto him a Tomb's the Universe.
but commend in my calmer judgement those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of their Fathers, and strive to go the neatest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper of Crows and Daws,[3] nor the numerous and weary days of our Fathers before the Flood. If there be any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee:[4] as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn,[5] nor hath my pulse beat thirty years; and yet, excepting one, have seen the Ashes and left under ground all the Kings of Europe; have been contemporary to three Emperours, four Grand Signiours, and as many Popes. Methinks I have outlived my self, and begin to be weary of the Sun; I have shaken hands with delight, in my warm blood and Canicular[6] days, I perceive I do anticipate the vices of age; the World to me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but Pantalones and Anticks, to my severer contemplations.
XLII. It is not, I confess, an unlawful Prayer to desire to surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein He thought fittest to dye; yet if (as Divinity affirms,) there shall be no gray hairs in Heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do but outlive those perfections in this World, to be recalled unto them by a greater Miracle in the next, and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice, or a point to be super-annuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate[7] our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases,)
- ↑ "Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with a staffe in his hand to fright away the crowes."—T.B.
- ↑ Boastful utterance.
- ↑ These birds were supposed to live several times the length of human life.
- ↑ Fifty years.
- ↑ Thirty years.
- ↑ Dog-days: here, figuratively, for young manhood.
- ↑ Make crooked.
