CHAPTER V._Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend

Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of

Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn

all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested

under the drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can

promise such diuturnity unto his relicks, or might not gladly say,

_Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim?_[BP]

[BP] _Tibullus_, lib. iii. el. 2, 26.

Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all

things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.

In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when

to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and obscurity their

protection. If they died by violent hands, and were thrust into their

urns, these bones become considerable, and some old philosophers would

honour them, whose souls they conceived most pure, which were thus

snatched from their bodies, and to retain a stronger propension unto

them; whereas they weariedly left a languishing corpse and with faint

desires of re-union. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt

up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but

one blot with infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life

be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we

live with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the

life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes: common counters sum up

the life of Moses his man. Our days become considerable, like petty

sums, by minute accumulations: where numerous fractions make up but

small round numbers; and our days of a span long, make not one little

finger.[BQ]

[BQ] According to the ancient arithmetick of the hand, wherein

the little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an

hundred.--_Pierius in Hieroglyph._

If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity

into it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in

half-senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying;

when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew

politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of

men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity

stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena’s nights,[BR] and time hath

no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish

itself, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond

the malcontent of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his

nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future

being, although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and

as it were an abortion.

[BR] One night as long as three.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid

himself among women, though puzzling questions,[BS] are not beyond

all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the

famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors,

might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of

these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question

above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by

spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary

observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they

have done for their relicks, they had not so grossly erred in the

art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally

extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion

of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a

fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems

of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding

vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever,

had encouragement for ambition; and, finding no _atropos_ unto the

immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of

oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts

of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable

meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of

their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their

monuments and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of

time, we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition

may fear the prophecy of Elias,[BT] and Charles the Fifth can never

hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.[BU]

[BS] The puzzling questions of Tiberius unto grammarians.--_Marcel._

_Donatus in Suet._

[BT] That the world may last but six thousand years.

[BU] Hector’s fame outlasting above two lives of Methuselah before that

famous prince was extant.

And therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories

unto the present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and

superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our

names, as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no

proportion unto the other. ’Tis too late to be ambitious. The great

mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our

designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily

pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our

expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to

our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of

time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being

necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally

constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably

decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids

pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment.

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal

right-lined circle[BV] must conclude and shut up all. There is no

antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all

things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly

tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth

scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old

families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like

many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first

letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and

have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations

unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.

[BV] The character of death.

To be content that times to come should only know there was such a

man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition

in Cardan;[BW] disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment

of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates’s patients, or

Achilles’s horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts

and noble acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the _entelechia_

and soul of our subsistences? To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds

an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a

name, than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good

thief, than Pilate?

[BW] “Cuperem notum esse quod sim non opto ut sciatur qualis sim.”

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals

with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that

burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath

spared the epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself. In

vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names,

since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long

as Agamemnon without the favour of the everlasting register. Who

knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more

remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known

account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and

Methuselah’s long life had been his only chronicle.

Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as

though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in

the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story and the

recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number

of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far

surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour

adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

And since death must be the _Lucina_ of life, and even Pagans[108]

could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun

sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore

it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light

in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying

mementoes, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long

duration;--diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares

with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly

remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave

but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows

destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions

induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon

us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of

evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision

in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days,

and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our

sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of

antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration

of their souls,--a good way to continue their memories, while having

the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something

remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their

passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations.

Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing,

were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of

the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into

their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more

unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend

the return of their souls. But all is vanity, feeding the wind, and

folly. Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice

now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim, cures wounds, and

Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from

oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even

in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate

their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath

already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost

in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption

in the heavens, we find that they are but like the earth;--durable in

their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and

new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander

about the sun, with Phaeton’s favour, would make clear conviction.

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no

beginning, may be confident of no end;--all others have a dependent

being and within the reach of destruction;--which is the peculiar of

that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself;--and the highest

strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to

suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian

immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either

state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can

only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either

of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein

there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found

unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape

in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous

in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor

omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A

small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after

death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like

Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of

prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober

obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch,

a mourner, and an urn.

Five languages[109] secured not the epitaph of Gordianus. The man of

God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred

by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks

directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or

burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of

perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being

still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this

stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all

die but be changed, according to received translation, the last day

will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate

lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened before they be quite

closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall

groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and

living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall wish

the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations shall

be courted.

While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined

them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not

acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems most subtle, who

had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, that

thought himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues,

and stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes

innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid

to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among

the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.[BX]

[BX] Isa. xiv. 16.

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory,

and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous

resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride

and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible

perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be

poorly seen in angles of contingency.[BY]

[BY] The least of angles.

Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made

little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while

they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their

fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand

Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,

transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and

ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome

anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the

earth in ashes unto them.

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 Elysiums. But all this is

nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be

again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble

believers, ’tis all one to lie in St Innocent’s[BZ] church-yard as in

the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever,

and as content with six foot as the _moles_ of Adrianus.[CA]

[BZ] In Paris, where bodies soon consume.

[CA] A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in Rome,

where now standeth the castle of St Angelo.

----“_Tabésne cadavera solvat,

An rogus, haud refert._”--LUCAN. viii. 809.

A LETTER TO A FRIEND,

UPON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND.

LETTER TO A 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 an

Hippocratical face should not alarum 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 ’tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a physician as a judge.

Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all

hopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold

a grasshopper,[110] much less to pluck another fig; and in no long time

after seemed to discover that odd mortal symptom in him not mentioned

by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his own face, and look like some of

his near relations; for he maintained not his proper countenance, but

looked like his uncle, the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible

in his healthful visage before: for as from our beginning we run

through variety of looks, before we come to consistent and settled

faces; so before our end, by sick and languishing alterations, we put

on new visages: and in our retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks

which from community of seminal originals were before latent in us.

He was fruitlessly put in hope of advantage by change of air, and

imbibing the pure aerial nitre of these parts; and therefore, being

so far spent, he quickly found Sardinia in Tivoli,[CB] and the

most healthful air of little effect, where death had set her broad

arrow;[CC] for he lived not unto the middle of May, and confirmed the

observation of Hippocrates of that mortal time of the year when the

leaves of the fig-tree resemble a daw’s claw. He is happily seated

who lives in places whose air, earth, and water, promote not the

infirmities of his weaker parts, or is early removed into regions that

correct them. He that is tabidly[111] inclined, were unwise to pass his

days in Portugal: cholical persons will find little comfort in Austria

or Vienna: he that is weak-legged must not be in love with Rome, nor

an infirm head with Venice or Paris. Death hath not only particular

stars in heaven, but malevolent places on earth, which single out

our infirmities, and strike at our weaker parts; in which concern,

passager and migrant birds have the great advantages, who are naturally

constituted for distant habitations, whom no seas nor places limit,

but in their appointed seasons will visit us from Greenland and Mount

Atlas, and, as some think, even from the Antipodes.[CD]

[CB] “Cum mors venerit, in medio Tibure Sardinia est.”

[CC] In the king’s forests they set the figure of a broad arrow upon

trees that are to be cut down.

[CD] _Bellonius de Avibus._

Though we could not have his life, yet we missed not our desires in his

soft departure, which was scarce an expiration; and his end not unlike

his beginning, when the salient point scarce affords a sensible motion,

and his departure so like unto sleep, that he scarce needed the civil

ceremony of closing his eyes; contrary unto the common way, wherein

death draws up, sleep lets fall the eyelids. With what strife and pains

we came into the world we know not; but ’tis commonly no easy matter

to get out of it: yet if it could be made out, that such who have easy

nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily; his departure was

so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature,

and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity.

Besides his soft death, the incurable state of his disease might

somewhat extenuate your sorrow, who know that monsters but seldom

happen, miracles more rarely in physick.[CE] _Angelus Victorius_ gives

a serious account of a consumptive, hectical, phthisical woman, who

was suddenly cured by the intercession of Ignatius. We read not of any

in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour, though some

may be contained in that large expression, that he went about Galilee

healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases.[CF] Amulets,

spells, sigils, and incantations, practised in other diseases, are

seldom pretended in this; and we find no sigil in the Archidoxis of

Paracelsus to cure an extreme consumption or marasmus, which, if other

diseases fail, will put a period unto long livers, and at last makes

dust of all. And therefore the Stoics could not but think that the

fiery principle would wear out all the rest, and at last make an end of

the world, which notwithstanding without such a lingering period the

Creator may effect at his pleasure: and to make an end of all things on

earth, and our planetical system of the world, he need but put out the

sun.

[CE] “Monstra contingunt in medicina.” _Hippoc._--“Strange and rare

escapes there happen sometimes in physick.”

[CF] Matt. iv. 23.

I was not so curious to entitle the stars unto any concern of his

death, yet could not but take notice that he died when the moon was in

motion from the meridian; at which time an old Italian long ago would

persuade me that the greatest part of men died: but herein I confess

I could never satisfy my curiosity; although from the time of tides

in places upon or near the sea, there may be considerable deductions;

and Pliny[CG] hath an odd and remarkable passage concerning the death

of men and animals upon the recess or ebb of the sea. However, certain

it is, he died in the dead and deep part of the night, when Nox might

be most apprehensibly said to be the daughter of Chaos, the mother of

sleep and death, according to old genealogy; and so went out of this

world about that hour when our blessed Saviour entered it, and about

what time many conceive he will return again unto it. Cardan[112] hath

a peculiar and no hard observation from a man’s hand to know whether he

was born in the day or night, which I confess holdeth in my own. And

Scaliger[113] to that purpose hath another from the tip of the ear:[CH]

most men are begotten in the night, animals in the day; but whether

more persons have been born in the night or day, were a curiosity

undecidable, though more have perished by violent deaths in the day;

yet in natural dissolutions both times may hold an indifferency, at

least but contingent inequality. The whole course of time runs out

in the nativity and death of things; which whether they happen by

succession or coincidence, are best computed by the natural, not

artificial day.

[CG] “Aristoteles nullum animal nisi æstu recedente expirare affirmat;

observatum id multum in Gallico Oceano et duntaxat in homine

compertum,” lib. 2, cap. 101.

[CH] “Auris pars pendula lobus dicitur, non omnibus ea pars, est

auribus; non enim iis qui noctu sunt, sed qui interdiu, maxima ex

parte.”--_Com. in Aristot. de Animal._ lib. 1.

That Charles the Fifth[114] was crowned upon the day of his nativity,

it being in his own power so to order it, makes no singular

animadversion: but that he should also take King Francis[115] prisoner

upon that day, was an unexpected coincidence, which made the same

remarkable. Antipater, who had an anniversary feast every year upon

his birth-day, needed no astrological revolution to know what day he

should die on. When the fixed stars have made a revolution unto the

points from whence they first set out, some of the ancients thought

the world would have an end; which was a kind of dying upon the day of

its nativity. Now the disease prevailing and swiftly advancing about

the time of his nativity, some were of opinion that he would leave

the world on the day he entered into it; but this being a lingering

disease, and creeping softly on, nothing critical was found or

expected, and he died not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more

common with infants than to die on the day of their nativity, to behold

the worldly hours, and but the fractions thereof; and even to perish

before their nativity in the hidden world of the womb, and before

their good angel is conceived to undertake them. But in persons who

outlive many years, and when there are no less than three hundred and

sixty-five days to determine their lives in every year; that the first

day should make the last, that the tail of the snake should return into

its mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day

of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coincidence, which, though

astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary

in making predictions of it.[CI]

[CI] According to the Egyptian hieroglyphic.

In this consumptive condition and remarkable extenuation, he came to

be almost half himself, and left a great part behind him, which he

carried not to the grave. And though that story of Duke John Ernestus

Mansfield[116][CJ] be not so easily swallowed, that at his death his

heart was found not to be so big as a nut; yet if the bones of a good

skeleton weigh little more than twenty pounds, his inwards and flesh

remaining could make no bouffage,[117] but a light bit for the grave.

I never more lively beheld the starved characters of Dante[CK] in any

living face; an _aruspex_ might have read a lecture upon him without

exenteration, his flesh being so consumed, that he might, in a manner,

have discerned his bowels without opening of him; so that to be

carried, _sexta cervice_[CL] to the grave, was but a civil unnecessity;

and the complements of the coffin might outweigh the subject of it.

[CJ] Turkish history.

[CK] In the poet Dante’s description.

[CL] i.e. “by six persons.”

_Omnibonus Ferrarius_ in mortal dysenteries of children looks for a

spot behind the ear; in consumptive diseases some eye the complexion of

moles; Cardan eagerly views the nails, some the lines of the hand, the

thenar or muscle of the thumb; some are so curious as to observe the

depth of the throat-pit, how the proportion varieth of the small of the

legs unto the calf, or the compass of the neck unto the circumference

of the head; but all these, with many more, were so drowned in a

mortal visage, and last face of Hippocrates, that a weak physiognomist

might say at first eye, this was a face of earth, and that _Morta_[CM]

had set her hard seal upon his temples, easily perceiving what

_caricatura_[CN] draughts death makes upon pined faces, and unto what

an unknown degree a man may live backward.

[CM] Morta, the deity of death or fate.

[CN] When men’s faces are drawn with resemblance to some other animals,

the Italians call it, to be drawn _in caricatura_.

Though the beard be only made a distinction of sex, and sign of

masculine heat by _Ulmus_,[CO] yet the precocity and early growth

thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long life.

Lewis, that virtuous but unfortunate king of Hungary, who lost his

life at the battle of Mohacz,[118] was said to be born without a skin,

to have bearded at fifteen, and to have shown some grey hairs about

twenty; from whence the diviners conjectured that he would be spoiled

of his kingdom, and have but a short life; but hairs make fallible

predictions, and many temples early grey have outlived the psalmist’s

period.[CP] Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the face

or head, but on the back, and not in men but children, as I long ago

observed in that endemial distemper of children in Languedoc, called

the _morgellons_,[CQ] wherein they critically break out with harsh

hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the

disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions.

[CO] _Ulmus de usu barbæ humanæ._

[CP] The life of man is threescore and ten.

[CQ] See _Picotus de Rheumatismo_.

The Egyptian mummies that I have seen, have had their mouths open, and

somewhat gaping, which affordeth a good opportunity to view and observe

their teeth, wherein ’tis not easy to find any wanting or decayed; and

therefore in Egypt, where one man practised but one operation, or the

diseases but of single parts, it must needs be a barren profession to

confine unto that of drawing of teeth, and to have been little better

than tooth-drawer unto King Pyrrhus,[CR] who had but two in his head.

[CR] His upper jaw being solid, and without distinct rows of teeth.

How the banyans of India maintain the integrity of those parts, I find

not particularly observed; who notwithstanding have an advantage of

their preservation by abstaining from all flesh, and employing their

teeth in such food unto which they may seem at first framed, from their

figure and conformation; but sharp and corroding rheums had so early

mouldered these rocks and hardest parts of his fabric, that a man might

well conceive that his years were never like to double or twice tell

over his teeth.[CS] Corruption had dealt more severely with them than

sepulchral fires and smart flames with those of burnt bodies of old;

for in the burnt fragments of urns which I have inquired into, although

I seem to find few incisors or shearers, yet the dog teeth and grinders

do notably resist those fires.

[CS] Twice tell over his teeth, never live to threescore years.

In the years of his childhood he had languished under the disease of

his country, the rickets; after which, notwithstanding many have become

strong and active men; but whether any have attained unto very great

years, the disease is scarce so old as to afford good observation.

Whether the children of the English plantations be subject unto the

same infirmity, may be worth the observing. Whether lameness and

halting do still increase among the inhabitants of Rovigno in Istria,

I know not; yet scarce twenty years ago Monsieur du Loyr observed

that a third part of that people halted; but too certain it is, that

the rickets increaseth among us; the small-pox grows more pernicious

than the great; the king’s purse knows that the king’s evil grows more

common. Quartan agues are become no strangers in Ireland; more common

and mortal in England; and though the ancients gave that disease[CT]

very good words, yet now that bell[CU] makes no strange sound which

rings out for the effects thereof.

[CT] Ασφαλέστατος καὶ ῥήϊστος, securissima et facillima.--_Hippoc._

[CU] Pro febre quartana raro sonat campana.

Some think there were few consumptions in the old world, when men lived

much upon milk; and that the ancient inhabitants of this island were

less troubled with coughs when they went naked and slept in caves and

woods, than men now in chambers and feather-beds. Plato will tell us,

that there was no such disease as a catarrh in Homer’s time, and that

it was but new in Greece in his age. Polydore Virgil delivereth that

pleurisies were rare in England, who lived but in the days of Henry the

Eighth. Some will allow no diseases to be new, others think that many

old ones are ceased: and that such which are esteemed new, will have

but their time: however, the mercy of God hath scattered the great heap

of diseases, and not loaded any one country with all: some may be new

in one country which have been old in another. New discoveries of the

earth discover new diseases: for besides the common swarm, there are

endemial and local infirmities proper unto certain regions, which in

the whole earth make no small number: and if Asia, Africa, and America,

should bring in their list, Pandora’s box would swell, and there must

be a strange pathology.

Most men expected to find a consumed kell,[119] empty and bladder-like

guts, livid and marbled lungs, and a withered pericardium in this

exsuccous corpse: but some seemed too much to wonder that two lobes of

his lungs adhered unto his side; for the like I have often found in

bodies of no suspected consumptions or difficulty of respiration. And

the same more often happeneth in men than other animals: and some think

in women than in men: but the most remarkable I have met with, was in a

man, after a cough of almost fifty years, in whom all the lobes adhered

unto the pleura, and each lobe unto another; who having also been much

troubled with the gout, brake the rule of Cardan,[CV] and died of the

stone in the bladder. Aristotle makes a query, why some animals cough,

as man; some not, as oxen. If coughing be taken as it consisteth of

a natural and voluntary motion, including expectoration and spitting

out, it may be as proper unto man as bleeding at the nose; otherwise we

find that Vegetius and rural writers have not left so many medicines

in vain against the coughs of cattle; and men who perish by coughs die

the death of sheep, cats, and lions: and though birds have no midriff,

yet we meet with divers remedies in Arrianus against the coughs of

hawks. And though it might be thought that all animals who have lungs

do cough; yet in cataceous fishes, who have large and strong lungs,

the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous quadrupeds: and in the

greatest thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their tears,

we find nothing of that motion.

[CV] Cardan in his _Encomium Podagrae_ reckoneth this among the _Dona

Podagræ_, that they are delivered thereby from the phthisis and stone

in the bladder.

From the thoughts of sleep, when the soul was conceived nearest unto

divinity, the ancients erected an art of divination, wherein while

they too widely expatiated in loose and in consequent conjectures,

Hippocrates[CW] wisely considered dreams as they presaged alterations

in the body, and so afforded hints toward the preservation of health,

and prevention of diseases; and therein was so serious as to advise

alteration of diet, exercise, sweating, bathing, and vomiting; and also

so religious as to order prayers and supplications unto respective

deities, in good dreams unto Sol, Jupiter cœlestis, Jupiter opulentus,

Minerva, Mercurius, and Apollo; in bad, unto Tellus and the heroes.

[CW] Hippoc, _de Insomniis_

And therefore I could not but notice how his female friends were

irrationally curious so strictly to examine his dreams, and in this

low state to hope for the phantasms of health. He was now past the

healthful dreams of the sun, moon, and stars, in their clarity and

proper courses. ’Twas too late to dream of flying, of limpid fountains,

smooth waters, white vestments, and fruitful green trees, which are the

visions of healthful sleeps, and at good distance from the grave.

And they were also too deeply dejected that he should dream of his dead

friends, inconsequently divining, that he would not be long from them;

for strange it was not that he should sometimes dream of the dead,

whose thoughts run always upon death; beside, to dream of the dead,

so they appear not in dark habits, and take nothing away from us, in

Hippocrates’ sense was of good signification: for we live by the dead,

and everything is or must be so before it becomes our nourishment. And

Cardan, who dreamed that he discoursed with his dead father in the

moon, made thereof no mortal interpretation; and even to dream that we

are dead, was having a signification of liberty, vacuity from cares,

exemption and freedom from troubles unknown unto the dead.

Some dreams I confess may admit of easy and feminine exposition; he who

dreamed that he could not see his right shoulder, might easily fear

to lose the sight of his right eye; he that before a journey dreamed

that his feet were cut off, had a plain warning not to undertake his

intended journey. But why to dream of lettuce should presage some

ensuing disease, why to eat figs should signify foolish talk, why to

eat eggs great trouble, and to dream of blindness should be so highly

commended, according to the oneirocritical verses of Astrampsychus and

Nicephorus, I shall leave unto your divination.

He was willing to quit the world alone and altogether, leaving no

earnest behind him for corruption or after-grave, having small content

in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply

satisfied that his disease should die with himself, nor revive in a

posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementoes of their parent

hereditary. Leprosy awakes not sometimes before forty, the gout and

stone often later; but consumptive and tabid[CX] roots sprout more

early, and at the fairest make seventeen years of our life doubtful

before that age. They that enter the world with original diseases as

well as sin, have not only common mortality but sick traductions to

destroy them, make commonly short courses, and live not at length

but in figures; so that a sound Cæsarean nativity[CY] may outlast a

natural birth, and a knife may sometimes make way for a more lasting

fruit than a midwife; which makes so few infants now able to endure the

old test of the river,[CZ] and many to have feeble children who could

scarce have been married at Sparta, and those provident states who

studied strong and healthful generations; which happen but contingently

in mere pecuniary matches or marriages made by the candle, wherein

notwithstanding there is little redress to be hoped from an astrologer

or a lawyer, and a good discerning physician were like to prove the

most successful counsellor.

[CX] Tabes maxime contingunt ab anno decimo octavo and trigesi mum

quintum.--_Hippoc._

[CY] A sound child cut out of the body of the mother.

[CZ] Natos ad flumina primum deferimus sævoque gelu dura mus et undis.

Julius Scaliger, who in a sleepless fit of the gout could make two

hundred verses in a night, would have but five[DA] plain words upon his

tomb. And this serious person, though no minor wit, left the poetry of

his epitaph unto others; either unwilling to commend himself, or to be

judged by a distich, and perhaps considering how unhappy great poets

have been in versifying their own epitaphs; wherein Petrarch, Dante,

and Ariosto, have so unhappily failed, that if their tombs should

outlast their works, posterity would find so little of Apollo on them

as to mistake them for Ciceronian poets.

[DA] Julii Cæsaris Scaligeri quod fuit.--_Joseph. Scaliger in vita

patris._

In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he was

somewhat too young and of too noble a mind, to fall upon that stupid

symptom observable in divers persons near their journey’s end, and

which may be reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease;

that is, to become more narrow-minded, miserable, and tenacious,

unready to part with anything, when they are ready to part with

all, and afraid to want when they have no time to spend; meanwhile

physicians, who know that many are mad but in a single depraved

imagination, and one prevalent decipiency; and that beside and out of

such single deliriums a man may meet with sober actions and good sense

in bedlam; cannot but smile to see the heirs and concerned relations

gratulating themselves on the sober departure of their friends; and

though they behold such mad covetous passages, content to think they

die in good understanding, and in their sober senses.

Avarice, which is not only infidelity, but idolatry, either from

covetous progeny or questuary[120] education, had no root in his

breast, who made good works the expression of his faith, and was big

with desires unto public and lasting charities; and surely where

good wishes and charitable intentions exceed abilities, theorical

beneficency may be more than a dream. They build not castles in the

air who would build churches on earth; and though they leave no such

structures here, may lay good foundations in heaven. In brief, his

life and death were such, that I could not blame them who wished the

like, and almost to have been himself; almost, I say; for though we

may wish the prosperous appurtenances of others, or to be another in

his happy accidents, yet so intrinsical is every man unto himself,

that some doubt may be made, whether any would exchange his being, or

substantially become another man.

He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby observed

under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not

here to be found. And although he had no opinion of reputed felicities

below, and apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such

happiness, yet his sober contempt of the world wrought no Democratism

or Cynicism, no laughing or snarling at it, as well understanding

there are not felicities in this world to satisfy a serious mind; and

therefore, to soften the stream of our lives, we are fain to take in

the reputed contentations of this world, to unite with the crowd in

their beatitudes, and to make ourselves happy by consortion, opinion,

and co-existimation; for strictly to separate from received and

customary felicities, and to confine unto the rigour of realities,

were to contract the consolation of our beings unto too uncomfortable

circumscriptions.

Not to fear death,[DB] nor desire it, was short of his resolution: to

be dissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying ditty. He conceived

his thread long, in no long course of years, and when he had scarce

outlived the second life of Lazarus;[DC] esteeming it enough to

approach the years of his Saviour, who so ordered his own human state,

as not to be old upon earth.

[DB] Summum nec metuas diem nec optes.

[DC] Who upon some accounts, and tradition, is said to have lived

thirty years after he was raised by our Saviour.--_Baronius._

But to be content with death may be better than to desire it; a

miserable life may make us wish for death, but a virtuous one to rest

in it; which is the advantage of those resolved Christians, who looking

on death not only as the sting, but the period and end of sin, the

horizon and isthmus between this life and a better, and the death of

this world but as a nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the

common necessity, and envy not Enoch or Elias.

Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those who

destroy themselves,[DD] who being afraid to live run blindly upon

their own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics had

a notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof; that is, in such

extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided, and wish what

might be feared; and so made evils voluntary, and to suit with their

own desires, which took off the terror of them.

[DD] In the speech of Vulteius in Lucan, animating his soldiers in a

great struggle to kill one another.--“Decernite letum, et metus omnis

abest, cupias quodcumque necesse est.” “All fear is over, do but

resolve to die, and make your desires meet necessity.”--_Phars._ iv.

486.

But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies; who,

though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own executioners;

and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their

bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill

themselves.

His willingness to leave this world about that age, when most men think

they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was

not strange unto mine, who have so often observed, that many, though

old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus’s

oxen[121], backward, with great struggling and reluctancy unto the

grave. The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with

life, and all to be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate

of the old world, when some could scarce remember themselves young,

may afford no better digested death than a more moderate period. Many

would have thought it an happiness to have had their lot of life in

some notable conjunctures of ages past; but the uncertainty of future

times have tempted few to make a part in ages to come. And surely, he

that hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the

degenerate state of this age, is not like to envy those that shall live

in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence, when no man

can comfortably imagine what face this world will carry: and therefore

since every age makes a step unto the end of all things, and the

Scripture affords so hard a character of the last times; quiet minds

will be content with their generations, and rather bless ages past,

than be ambitious of those to come.

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly

discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the grey

hair, and an unspotted life old age; although his years come short,

he might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to

have been Solomon’s[DE] old man. And surely if we deduct all those

days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the

comfort of those we now live; if we reckon up only those days which

God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a

span long: the son in this sense may outlive the father, and none be

climacterically old. He that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence

of age, is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and

’tis superfluous to live unto grey hairs, when in precocious temper we

anticipate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young

who outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure

of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and

longest intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect

rule of piety, is to be preferred before sinning immortality.

[DE] Wisdom, cap. iv.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he

wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker

constitutions. _Cautelous_ chastity and _crafty_ sobriety were far from

him; those jewels were _paragon_, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in

him; which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes, and few

mementoes unto you.

Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulous[122] track and

narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously, be sober and

temperate, not to preserve your body in a sufficiency for wanton ends,

not to spare your purse, not to be free from the infamy of common

transgressors that way, and thereby to balance or palliate obscure

and closer vices, nor simply to enjoy health, by all of which you

may leaven good actions, and render virtues disputable, but, in one

word, that you may truly serve God, which every sickness will tell you

you cannot well do without health. The sick man’s sacrifice is but a

lame oblation. Pious treasures, laid up in healthful days, excuse the

defect of sick non-performance; without which we must needs look back

with anxiety upon the last opportunities of health; and may have cause

rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent malefactors, who go with

clear parts unto the last act of their lives, and in the integrity of

their faculties return their spirit unto God that gave it.

Consider whereabouts thou art in Cebe’s[123] table, or that old

philosophical pinax[124] of the life of man; whether thou art still in

the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yet entered the narrow

gate, got up the hill and asperous way which leadeth unto the house

of sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand of sincere

erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a virtuous and

happy life.

In this virtuous voyage let no disappointment cause despondency,

nor difficulty despair. Think not that you are sailing from Lima to

Manilla,[DF] [125] wherein thou mayest tie up the rudder, and sleep

before the wind, but expect rough seas, flaws and contrary blasts; and

’tis well if by many cross tacks and veerings thou arrivest at the

port. Sit not down in the popular seats and common level of virtues,

but endeavour to make them heroical. Offer not only peace-offerings but

holocausts unto God. To serve him singly to serve ourselves were too

partial a piece of piety, not like to place us in the highest mansions

of glory.

[DF] Through the Pacifick Sea with a constant gale from the east.

He that is chaste and continent not to impair his strength or

terrified by contagion will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn

not that virtue until those years when Cato could lend out his wife,

and impotent satyrs write satires against lust, but be chaste in thy

flaming days when Alexander dared not trust his eyes upon the fair

sisters of Darius, and when so many think that there is no other way

but Origen’s.[DG]

[DG] Who is said to have castrated himself.

Be charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not the glory

of the mitre. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them, and

think it is not enough to be liberal but munificent. Though a cup of

cold water from some hand may not be without its reward, yet stick not

thou for wine and oil for the wounds of the distressed, and treat the

poor as our Saviour did the multitude to the reliques of some baskets.

Trust not unto the omnipotency of gold, or say not unto it, thou art

my confidence. Kiss not thy hand when thou beholdest that terrestrial

sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servitude. A slave unto Mammon makes

no servant unto God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith, numbs

the apprehension of anything above sense; and only affected with the

certainty of things present, makes a peradventure of things to come;

lives but unto one world, nor hopes but fears another: makes their own

death sweet unto others, bitter unto themselves, brings formal sadness,

scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.

If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment. Miserable men

commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto themselves, and merciless

unto their own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless the possession

of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich. For since

thy good works, not thy goods will follow thee; since riches are an

appurtenance of life, and no dead man is rich, to famish in plenty, and

live poorly to die rich, were a multiplying improvement in madness and

use upon use in folly.

Persons lightly dipt, not grained, in generous honesty are but pale in

goodness and faint-hued in sincerity. But be thou what thou virtuously

art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand majestically

upon that axis where prudent simplicity hath fixed thee; and at no

temptation invert the poles of thy honesty that vice may be uneasy and

even monstrous unto thee; let iterated good acts and long confirmed

habits make virtue natural or a second nature in thee; and since few or

none prove eminently virtuous but from some advantageous foundations

in their temper and natural inclinations, study thyself betimes, and

early find what nature bids thee to be or tells thee what thou mayest

be. They who thus timely descend into themselves, cultivating the good

seeds which nature hath set in them, and improving their prevalent

inclinations to perfection, become not shrubs but cedars in their

generation. And to be in the form of the best of bad, or the worst of

the good, will be no satisfaction unto them.

Let not the law of thy country be the _non ultra_ of thy honesty, nor

think that always good enough that the law will make good. Narrow not

the law of charity, equity, mercy. Join gospel righteousness with legal

right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but let the Sermon on the

Mount be thy Targum unto the law of Sinai.

Make not the consequences of virtue the ends thereof. Be not beneficent

for a name or cymbal of applause; nor exact and punctual in commerce

for the advantages of trust and credit, which attend the reputation of

just and true dealing: for such rewards, though unsought for, plain

virtue will bring with her, whom all men honour, though they pursue

not. To have other by-ends in good actions sours laudable performances,

which must have deeper roots, motives, and instigations, to give them

the stamp of virtues.

Though human infirmity may betray thy heedless days into the popular

ways of extravagancy, yet, let not thine own depravity or the torrent

of vicious times carry thee into desperate enormities in opinions,

manners, or actions. If thou hast dipped thy foot in the river, yet

venture not over Rubicon; run not into extremities from whence there

is no regression, nor be ever so closely shut up within the holds

of vice and iniquity, as not to find some escape by a postern of

recipiscency.[126]

Owe not thy humility unto humiliation by adversity, but look humbly

down in that state when others look upward upon thee. Be patient in the

age of pride, and days of will, and impatiency, when men live but by

intervals of reason, under the sovereignty of humour and passion, when

it is in the power of every one to transform thee out of thyself, and

put thee into short madness.[DH] If you cannot imitate Job, yet come

not short of Socrates, and those patient Pagans, who tired the tongues

of their enemies, while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen

walls and statues.

[DH] Iræ furor brevis est.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content to be

envied, but envy not. Emulation may be plausible, and indignation

allowable, but admit no treaty with that passion which no circumstance

can make good. A displacency at the good of others, because they enjoy

it although we do not want it, is an absurd depravity sticking fast

unto nature, from its primitive corruption, which he that can well

subdue were a Christian of the first magnitude, and for ought I know

may have one foot already in heaven.

While thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of Diabolism.

Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature

whom thou so much abhorrest, that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite,

whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous

depravities and narrow-minded vices! not only below St Paul’s noble

Christian, but Aristotle’s true gentleman.[DI] Trust not with some

that the Epistle of St James is apocryphal, and so read with less fear

that stabbing truth that in company with this vice, “thy religion is

in vain.” Moses broke the tables without breaking the law, but where

charity is broke the law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole

without love that is “the fulfilling of it.” Look humbly upon thy

virtues, and though thou art rich in some, yet think thyself poor

and naked without that crowning grace which “thinketh no evil, which

envieth not, which beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things.”

With these sure graces while busy tongues are crying out for a drop of

cold water, mutes may be in happiness, and sing the “Trisagium,”[DJ] in

heaven.

[DI] See Aristotle’s Ethics, chapter Magnanimity.

[DJ] Holy, holy, holy.

Let not the sun in Capricorn[DK] go down upon thy wrath, but write thy

wrongs in water, draw the curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up

in the tower of oblivion,[DL] and let them be as though they had not

been. Forgive thine enemies totally, without any reserve of hope that

however God will revenge thee.

[DK] Even when the days are shortest.

[DL] Alluding to the tower of oblivion, mentioned by Procopius, which

was the name of a tower of imprisonment among the Persians; whoever was

put therein was as it were buried alive, and it was death for any but

to name him.

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto

others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the

lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the heels of pride, and

let ambition have but an epicycle[127] or narrow circuit in thee.

Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy

grave; and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be

contented with under it. Spread not into boundless expansions either

to designs or desires. Think not that mankind liveth but for a few;

and that the rest are born but to serve the ambition of those who make

but flies of men, and wildernesses of whole nations. Swell not into

vehement actions, which embroil and confound the earth, but be one of

those violent ones that force the kingdom of heaven.[DM] If thou must

needs rule, be Zeno’s king, and enjoy that empire which every man gives

himself: certainly the iterated injunctions of Christ unto humility,

meekness, patience, and that despised train of virtues, cannot but

make pathetical impression upon those who have well considered the

affairs of all ages; wherein pride, ambition, and vain-glory, have led

up to the worst of actions, whereunto confusions, tragedies, and acts,

denying all religion, do owe their originals.

[DM] St Matt. xi.

Rest not in an ovation,[DN] but a triumph over thy passions. Chain

up the unruly legion of thy breast; behold thy trophies within thee,

not without thee. Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Cæsar unto

thyself.

[DN] Ovation, a petty and minor kind of triumph.

Give no quarter unto those vices that are of thine inward family, and,

having a root in thy temper, plead a right and propriety in thee.

Examine well thy complexional inclinations. Rain early batteries

against those strongholds built upon the rock of nature, and make

this a great part of the militia of thy life. The politic nature of

vice must be opposed by policy, and therefore wiser honesties project

and plot against sin; wherein notwithstanding we are not to rest in

generals, or the trite stratagems of art; that may succeed with one

temper, which may prove successless with another. There is no community

or commonwealth of virtue, every man must study his own economy and

erect these rules unto the figure of himself.

Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation.

Reckon not upon long life; but live always beyond thy account. He that

so often surviveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce

complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow;

make times to come present; conceive that near which may be far off.

Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them: be like

a neighbour unto death, and think there is but little to come. And

since there is something in us that must still live on, join both lives

together, unite them in thy thoughts and actions, and live in one but

for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this life, will

never be far from the next, and is in some manner already in it, by a

happy conformity and close apprehension of it.

NOTES TO THE RELIGIO MEDICI.

1. It was a proverb, “Ubi tres medici duo athei.”

2. A Latinised word meaning a taunt (impropero.)

3. The synod of Dort was held in 1619 to discuss the doctrines of

Arminius. It ended by condemning them.

4. Hallam, commenting on this passage, says--“That Jesuit must be a

disgrace to his order who would have asked more than such a concession

to secure a proselyte--the right of interpreting whatever was written,

and of supplying whatever was not.”--_Hist. England_, vol. ii. p. 74.

5. See the statute of the Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII. c. 14), which

declared that transubstantiation, communion in one kind, celibacy

of the clergy, vows of widowhood, private masses, and auricular

confession, were part of the law of England.

6. In the year 1606, when the Jesuits were expelled from Venice, Pope

Paul V. threatened to excommunicate that republic. A most violent

quarrel ensued, which was ultimately settled by the mediation of France.

7. Alluding to the story of Œdipus solving the riddle proposed by the

Sphynx.

8. The nymph Arethusa was changed by Diana into a fountain, and was

said to have flowed under the sea from Elis to the fountain of Arethusa

near Syracuse.--Ov. _Met._ lib. v. fab. 8.

9. These heretics denied the immortality of the soul, but held that it

was recalled to life with the body. Origen came from Egypt to confute

them, and is said to have succeeded. (See Mosh. _Eccl. Hist._, lib. i.

c. 5. sec. 16.) Pope John XXII. afterwards adopted it.

10. A division from the Greek διχοτομια.

11. The brain.

12. A faint resemblance, from the Latin _adumbro_, to shade.

13. Alluding to the idea Sir T. Browne often expresses, that an oracle

was the utterance of the devil.

14. To fathom, from Latin _profundus_.

15. Beginning from the Latin _efficio_.

16. Galen’s great work.

17. John de Monte Regio made a wooden eagle that, when the emperor was

entering Nuremburg, flew to meet him, and hovered over his head. He

also made an iron fly that, when at dinner, he was able to make start

from under his hand, and fly round the table.--See De Bartas, 6^{me}

jour 1^{me} semaine.

18. Hidden, from the Greek κρυπτω.

19. A military term for a small mine.

20. The Armada.

21. The practice of drawing lots.

22. An account.

23. See Il. VIII. 18--

“Let down our golden everlasting chain,

Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main.”

--_Pope_, Il. viii. 26.

24. An argument where one proposition is accumulated upon another, from

the Greek σωρειτης, a heap.

25. Alluding to the second triumvirate--that of Augustus, Antony, and

Lepidus. Florus says of it, “Respublica convulsa est lacerataque.”

26. Ochinus. He was first a monk, then a doctor, then a Capuchin friar,

then a Protestant: in 1547 he came to England, and was very active

in the Reformation. He was afterwards made Canon of Canterbury. The

Socinians claim him as one of their sect.

27. The father of Pantagruel. His adventures are given in the first

book of Rabelais, Sir Bevys of Hampton, a metrical romance, relating

the adventures of Sir Bevys with the Saracens.--Wright and Halliwell’s

_Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, ii. 59.

28. Contradictions between two laws.

29. On his arrival at Paris, Pantagruel visited the library of St

Victor: he states a list of the works he found there, among which was

“Tartaretus.” Pierre Tartaret was a French doctor who disputed with

Duns Scotus. His works were republished at Lyons, 1621.

30. Deucalion was king of Thessaly at the time of the deluge. He and

his wife Pyrrha, with the advice of the oracle of Themis, repeopled the

earth by throwing behind them the bones of their grandmother,--_i.e._,

stones of the earth.--See Ovid, _Met._ lib. i. fab. 7.

31. St Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7).

32. απηγξατο (St Matt. xxvii. 5) means death by choking. Erasmus

translates it, “abiens laqueo se suspendit.”

33. Burnt by order of the Caliph Omar, A.D. 640. It contained 700,000

volumes, which served the city for fuel instead of wood for six months.

34. Enoch being informed by Adam the world was to be drowned and

burnt, made two pillars, one of stone to withstand the water, and one

of brick to withstand the fire, and inscribed upon them all known

knowledge.--See Josephus, _Ant. Jud._

35. A Franciscan friar, counsellor to the Inquisition, who visited the

principal libraries in Spain to make a catalogue of the books opposed

to the Romish religion. His “index novus librorum prohibitorum” was

published at Seville in 1631.

36. Printing, gunpowder, clocks.

37. The Targums and the various Talmuds.

38. Pagans, Mahometans, Jews, Christians.

39. Valour, and death in battle.

40. Held 1414-1418.

41. Vergilius, bishop of Salzburg, having asserted the existence of

Antipodes, the Archbishop of Metz declared him to be a heretic, and

caused him to be burnt.

42. On searching on Mount Calvary for the true cross, the empress found

three. As she was uncertain which was the right one, she caused them to

be applied to the body of a dead man, and the one that restored him to

life was determined to be the true cross.

43. The critical time in human life.

44. Oracles were said to have ceased when Christ came, the reply to

Augustus on the subject being the last--

“Me puer Hebræus divos Deus ipse gubernans

Cedere sede jubet tristemque redire sub Orcum

Aris ergo de hinc tacitus discedito nostris.”

45. An historian who wrote “De Rebus Indicis.” He is cited by Pliny,

Strabo, and Josephus.

46. Alluding to the popular superstition that infant children were

carried off by fairies, and others left in their places.

47. Who is said to have lived without meat, on the smell of a rose.

48. “Essentiæ rationalis immortalis.”

49. St Augustine, De Civ. Dei, lib. x., cc. 9, 19, 32.

50. That which includes everything is opposed to nullity.

51. An inversion of the parts of an antithesis.

52. St Augustine--“Homily on Genesis.”

53. Sir T. Browne wrote a dialogue between two twins in the womb

respecting the world into which they were going!

54. Refinement.

55. Constitution another form of temperament.

56. The Jewish computation for fifty years.

57. Saturn revolves once in thirty years.

58. Christian IV., of Denmark, who reigned from 1588-1647.

59. Æson was the father of Jason. By bathing in a bath prepared for him

by Medæa with some magic spells, he became young again. Ovid describes

the bath and its ingredients, _Met._, lib. vii. fab. 2.

60. Alluding to the rabbinical tradition that the world would last for

6000 years, attributed to Elias, and cited in the Talmud.

61. Zeno was the founder of the Stoics.

62. Referring to a passage in Suetonius, Vit. J. Cæsar, sec

87:--“Aspernatus tam lentum mortis genus subitam sibi celeremque

optaverat.”

63. In holding

“Mors ultima pœna est,

Nec metuenda viris.”

64. The period when the moon is in conjunction and obscured by the sun.

65. One of the judges of hell.

66. To select some great man for our ideal, and always to act as if he

was present with us. See Seneca, lib. i. Ep. 11.

67. Sir T. Browne seems to have made various experiments in this

subject. D’Israeli refers to it in his “Curiosities of Literature.” Dr

Power, a friend of Sir T. Browne, with whom he corresponded, gives a

receipt for the process.

68. The celebrated Greek philosopher who taught that the sun was a mass

of heated stone, and various other astronomical doctrines. Some critics

say Anaxarchus is meant here.

69. See Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” lib. I. 254--

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

And also Lucretius--

“Hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.”--iii. 1023.

70. Keck says here--“So did they all, as Lactantius has observed

at large. Aristotle is said to have been guilty of great vanity in

his clothes, of incontinency, and of unfaithfulness to his master,

Alexander II.”

71. Phalaris, king of Agrigentum, who, when Perillus made a brazen bull

in which to kill criminals, placed him in it to try its effects.

72. Their maxim was

“Nihil sciri siquis putat id quoque nescit,

An sciri possit quod se nil scire fatetur.”

73. Pope Alexander III., in his declaration to the Doge, said,--“Que

la mer vous soit soumise comme l’epouse l’est à son epoux puisque vous

in avez acquis l’empire par la victorie.” In commemoration of this the

Doge and Senate went yearly to Lio, and throwing a ring into the water,

claimed the sea as their bride.

74. Appolonius Thyaneus, who threw a large quantity of gold into the

sea, saying, “Pessundo divitias ne pessundare ab illis.”

75. The technical term in fencing for a hit--

“A sweet touch, a quick venew of wit.”

_Love’s Labour Lost_, act v. sc. 1.

76. Strabo compared the configuration of the world, as then known, to a

cloak or mantle (_chalmys_).

77. Atomists or familists were a Puritanical sect who appeared about

1575, founded by Henry Nicholas, a Dutchman. They considered that the

doctrine of revelation was an allegory, and believed that they had

attained to spiritual perfection.--See Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, i. 273.

78. From the 126th psalm St Augustine contends that Solomon is damned.