Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus
Jus habett, incerti spatium mihi finiat oevi.
OVID. Met. xv. 873.
Come, soon or late, death's undetermin'd day,
This mortal being only can decay. WELSTED.
IT seems to be the fate of man to seek all his
consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom
able to fill desire or imagination with immediate
enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its
deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Every one has so often detected the fallaciousness
of hope, and the inconvenience of teaching
himself to expect what a thousand accidents may
preclude, that, when time has abated the confidence
with which youth rushes out to take possession of
the world, we endeavour, or wish, to find entertainment
in the review of life, and to repose upon
real facts, and certain experience. This is perhaps
one reason, among many, why age delights in
narratives.
But so full is the world of calamity, that every
source of pleasure is polluted, and every retirement
of tranquillity disturbed. When time has supplied
us with events sufficient to employ our thoughts,
it has mingled them with so many disasters, that
we shrink from their remembrance, dread their
intrusion upon our minds, and fly from them as from
enemies that pursue us with torture.
No man past the middle point of life can sit down
to feast upon the pleasures of youth without finding
the banquet embittered by the cup of sorrow;
he may revive lucky accidents, and pleasing
extravagancies; many days of harmless frolick, or
nights of honest festivity, will perhaps recur; or, if
he has been engaged in scenes of action, and
acquainted with affairs of difficulty and vicissitudes
of fortune, he may enjoy the nobler pleasure of
looking back upon distress firmly supported, dangers
resolutely encountered, and opposition artfully
defeated. AEneas properly comforts his companions,
when, after the horrours of a storm, they have landed
on an unknown and desolate country, with the hope
that their miseries will be at some distant time
recounted with delight. There are few higher
gratifications, than that of reflection on surmounted evils,
when they are not incurred nor protracted by our
fault, and neither approach us with cowardice nor
guilt.
But this felicity is almost always abated by the
reflection that they with whom we should be most
pleased to share it are now in the grave. A few years
make such havock in human generations, that we
soon see ourselves deprived of those with whom we
entered the world, and whom the participation of
pleasures or fatigues had endeared to our remembrance.
The man of enterprise recounts his adventures
and expedients, but is forced, at the close of
the relation, to pay a sigh to the names of those
that contributed to his success; he that passes his
life among the gayer part of mankind, has his
remembrance stored with remarks and repartees of
wits, whose sprightliness and merriment are now
lost in perpetual silence; the trader, whose industry
has supplied the want of inheritance, repines in
solitary plenty at the absence of companions, with whom
he had planned out amusements for his latter years;
and the scholar, whose merit, after a long series of
efforts, raises him from obscurity, looks round in
vain from his exaltation for his old friends or enemies,
whose applause or mortification would heighten his
triumph.
Among Martial's requisites to happiness is, Res
non parta labore, sed relicta, "an estate not gained
by industry, but left by inheritance." It is necessary
to the completion of every good, that it be timely
obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will
come too late to give much delight; yet all human
happiness has its defects. Of what we do not gain
for ourselves we have only a faint and imperfect
fruition, because we cannot compare the difference
between want and possession, or at least can derive
from it no conviction of our own abilities, nor any
increase of self-esteem; what we acquire by bravery
or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes
at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore
cannot enjoy it.
Thus every period of life is obliged to borrow its
happiness from the time to come. In youth we have
nothing past to entertain us, and in age, we derive
little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the
future likewise has its limits, which the imagination
dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far
distant. The loss of our friends and companions
impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own
departure; we know that the schemes of man are
quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in
the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former
ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall
be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface
of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades
of death.
Beyond this termination of our material existence,
we are therefore obliged to extend our hopes;
and almost every man indulges his imagination with
something, which is not to happen till he has changed
his manner of being: some amuse themselves with
entails and settlements, provide for the perpetuation
of families and honours, or contrive to obviate the
dissipation of the fortunes, which it has been their
business to accumulate; others, more refined or
exalted, congratulate their own hearts upon the
future extent of their reputation, the reverence of
distant nations, and the gratitude of unprejudiced
posterity.
They whose souls are so chained down to coffers
and tenements, that they cannot conceive a state in
which they shall look upon them with less solicitude,
are seldom attentive or flexible to arguments; but
the votaries of fame are capable of reflection, and
therefore may be called to reconsider the probability
of their expectations.
Whether to be remembered in remote times be
worthy of a wise man's wish, has not yet been
satisfactorily decided; and, indeed, to be long
remembered, can happen to so small a number, that the
bulk of mankind has very little interest in the
question. There is never room in the world for more than
a certain quantity or measure of renown. The
necessary business of life, the immediate pleasures or
pains of every condition, leave us not leisure beyond
a fixed proportion for contemplations which do not
forcibly influence our present welfare. When this
vacuity is filled, no characters can be admitted into
the circulation of fame, but by occupying the place
of some that must be thrust into oblivion. The eye
of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend
its view to new objects, by losing sight of those
which are now before it.
Reputation is therefore a meteor, which blazes a
while and disappears for ever; and, if we except
a few transcendent and invincible names, which
no revolutions of opinion or length of time is able to
suppress; all those that engage our thoughts, or
diversify our conversation, are every moment hasting
to obscurity, as new favourites are adopted by
fashion.
It is not therefore from this world, that any ray
of comfort can proceed, to cheer the gloom of the
last hour. But futurity has still its prospects; there
is yet happiness in reserve, which, if we transfer our
attention to it, will support us in the pains of disease,
and the langour of decay. This happiness we
may expect with confidence, because it is out of
the power of chance, and may be attained by all that
sincerely desire and earnestly pursue it. On this
therefore every mind ought finally to rest. Hope is
the chief blessing of man, and that hope only is
rational, of which we are certain that it cannot
deceive us.