ing the reasonable actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of divinity in us, but not in complement and perfection till we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper "ubi" of spirits. The smattering I have of the philoso pher's stone (which is something more than the perfect exaltation of gold) hath taught me a great deal of divinity, and instructed my belief how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and sleep awhile within this house of flesh. Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in silkworms, turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something divine, and hath more in it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover.

I am naturally bashful, nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been able to effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty which I have seldom discovered in another, that is, (to speak truly) I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof. "T is the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, wife and children, stand afraid and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that before in a

natural fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters; wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum mutatus ab illo !" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.

Some upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with patience away with death. This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies, seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the earth. And therefore at my death I mean to take a total adieu of the world, not caring for a monument, history, or epitaph, not so much as the memory of my name to be found any where, but in the universal register of God. I am not yet so cynical as to approve the testament of Dioge

nes,* nor do I altogether allow that rodomon

tado of Lucan;

Cœlo tegitur, qui non habet urnam ;

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse,
For unto him a tomb 's the universe;

but commend in my calmer judgments, those ingenuous intentions, that desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, and strive to go the nearest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper of crows and daws,† nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers before the flood. If there be any truth in astrology, I may outlive a jubilee. As yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn, 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 emperors, four grand seigniors, and as many popes. Methinks I have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken hands with delight. In my warm blood and canicular days I perceive I do anticipate the vices of age; the

* Who willed his friend not to bury him, but hang him up with a staff in his hand to fright away the crows.

† As Theophrastus did, who dying, accused nature for giving them, to whom it could not be of any concernment, so large a life; and to man, whom it much concerned, so short a one. Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. 3.

world to me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but pantalones and antics, to my severer contemplations.

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 die. 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 superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin; and the number of our days doth but make our sins innumerable. The same vice committed at sixteen, is not the same, though it agrees in all other circumstances, as at forty, but swells and doubles from that circumstance of our age, wherein, besides the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of our judgment cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon. Every sin, the oftener it is committed, the

more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as they proceed, they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that went before it. And though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero's ground, because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity makes me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth. I committed many then, because I was a child, and because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of son's bath before threescore.*

And truly there goes a great deal of providence to produce a man's life unto threescore. There is more required than an able temper for those years. Though the radical humor contain

* Eson was the son of Jason, and, at his request, was by Medea, by the means of this bath, restored to his youth. Ingredients that went into it, and the description of Medea's performance, Ovid gives you, lib. 7, Metam.