To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysium. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble believers, 't is all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard,* as in the sands of Egypt,† ready to be any thing, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the "moles" of Adri * In Paris, where bodies soon consume. + Beneath the pyramids. A stately mausoleum, or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St. Angelo. A LETTER TO A FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND. GIVE me leave to wonder that news of this nature should have such heavy wings, that you should hear so little concerning your dearest friend, and that I must make that unwilling repetition to tell you, "ad portam rigidos calces extendit," that he is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour, you know, largely addeth unto that dark society; and, considering the incessant mortality of mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole earth so few as a thousand an hour. Although at this distance you had no early account or particular of his death, yet your affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret sense or intimation thereof by dreams, thoughtful whisperings, mercurisms, airy nuncios, or sympathetical insinuations, which many seem to have had at the death of their dearest friends; for since we find in that famous story that spirits themselves were fain to tell their fellows at a distance that the great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient excuse for our ignorance in such particulars, and must rest content with the common road and Appian way of knowledge, by information. Though the uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded all human predictions, yet they who shall live to see the sun and moon darkened and the stars to fall from heaven, will hardly be deceived in the advent of the last day. And therefore strange it is, that the common fallacy of consumptive persons, who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their friends in perfect health and judgment; that you should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick complexion, or that almost a Hippocratical face should not alarm you to higher fears, or rather despair of his continuation in such an emaciated state; wherein medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute diseases, and wherein 't is as dangerous to be sentenced by a physician as a judge. |