If you should see a man who were to cross from Dover to Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, and trouble himself many weeks before in ****** provisions for the voyage, would you commend him for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at him for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb? A man who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the greatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all conveniences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridiculous; he does as little consider the shortness of his passage that he might proportion his cares accordingly. It is, alas, so narrow a strait betwixt the womb and the grave, that it might be called the Pas de Vie, as well as the Pas de Calais. We are all [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] as Pindar calls us, creatures of a day, and therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that little space; as if it were very probable that every day should be our last, we are taught to demand even bread for no longer a time. The sun ought not to set upon our covetousness; no more than upon our anger; but as to God Almighty a thousand years are as one day, so, in direct opposition, one day to the covetous man is as a thousand years, tam brevi fortis jaculatur aevo multa, so far he shoots beyond his butt.
One would think he were of the opinion of the Millenaries, and hoped for so long a reign upon earth. The patriarchs before the flood, who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, less stores for the maintaining of it; they who lived nine hundred years scarcely provided for a few days; we who live but a few days, provide at least for nine hundred years. What a strange alteration is this of human life and manners! and yet we see an imitation of it in every man's particular experience, for we begin not the cares of life till it be half spent, and still increase them as that decreases. What is there among the actions of beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason? When they do anything which seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a natural instinct. If we could but learn to number our days (as we are taught to pray that we might) we should adjust much better our other accounts, but whilst we never consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be without end too. Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words, spatio brevi spem longam reseces; from a short life cut off all hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away like suckers that choke the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit. And in another place to the same sense, Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam, which Seneca does not mend when he says, Oh quanta dementia est spes longas inchoantium! but he gives an example there of an acquaintance of his named Senecio, who from a very mean beginning by great industry in turning about of money through all ways of gain, had attained to extraordinary riches, but died on a sudden after having supped merrily, In ipso actu bene cedentium rerum, in ipso procurrentis fortunae impetu; in the full course of his good fortune, when she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all her sails on; upon which occasion he cries, out of Virgil:
Insere nunc Melibaee pyros, pone ordine vites:
Go to, Melibaeus, now, Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant;
Behold the fruit!
