'THE LORD BACON'S JUDGMENT OF A WORK OF THIS NATURE.'
* * * * *
'I do much admire that these times have so little esteemed the
vertues of the times, as that the writing of _Lives_ should be no
more frequent. For although there be not many soveraign princes,
or absolute commanders, and that states are most collected into
monarchies; yet are there many worthy personages that deserve better
than dispersed report, or barren elogies; for herein the invention
of one of the late poets is proper, and doth well inrich the ancient
fiction. For he faineth, that at the end of the thread or web of every
man's life, there was a little medal containing the person's name; and
that _Time_ waiteth upon the _Sheers_, and as soon as the thread was
cut, caught the medals, and carried them to the river _Lethe_; and
about the bank there were many birds flying up and down, and would get
the medals, and carry them in their beak a little while, and then let
them fall into the river. Onely there were a few _Swans_, which if
they got a name, would carry it to a temple where it was consecrate.'
_In_ LLOYD'S _State Worthies_, vol. i.
'It is a melancholy reflection to look back on so many great families
as have formerly adorned the county of Cornwall, and are now no more:
the Grenvilles, the Arundells, Carminows, Champernons, Bodrugans,
Mohuns, Killegrews, Bevilles, Trevarions, which had great sway and
possessions in these parts. The most lasting families have only their
seasons, more or less, of a certain constitutional strength. They
have their spring and summer sunshine glare, their wane, decline,
and death: they flourish and shine perhaps for ages;--at last they
sicken; their light grows pale, and, at a crisis when the off-sets are
withered and the old stock is blasted, the whole tribe disappears, and
leave the world as they have done Cornwall. There are limits ordained
to everything under the sun: _man will not abide in honour_.'
DR. BORLASE (_as quoted by_ LYSONS _in 'Magna Britannia,'_
vol. iii.--_Cornwall_, p. clxxiv.).
'Every man in the degree in which he has wit and culture finds his
curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of
other men.'