neither of those things which fall out by a precedent ratiocination
or a subsequent. And many by a timely death have been withdrawn from
greater calamities; so that it hath been good for some never to have
been born at all; for others, that as soon as life hath been blown in
it should be extinguished; for some, that they should live a little
longer; and for others again, that they should be cropped in the
prime of their youth. These several sorts of deaths should be taken
in good part, since Fate is inevitable. Therefore it becomes men well
educated to consider that those who have paid their debt to mortality
have only gone before us a little time; that the longest life is but
as a point in respect of eternity, and that many who have indulged
their sorrow to excess have themselves followed in a small while
those that they have lamented, having reaped no profit out of their
complaints, but macerated themselves with voluntary afflictions. Since
then the time of our pilgrimage in this life is but short, we ought
not to consume ourselves with sordid grief, and so render ourselves
unhappy by afflicting our minds and tormenting our bodies; but we
should endeavor after a more manly and rational sort of life, and not
associate ourselves with those who will be companions in grief and by
flattering our tears will only excite them the more, but rather with
those who will diminish our grief by solemn and generous consolation.
And we ought to hear and keep in our remembrance those words of Homer
wherewith Hector answers Andromache, comforting her after this manner:—
Andromache, my soul’s far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till Fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth,
And such the hard condition of our birth:
No force can then resist, no flight can save,
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.[173]
Which the poet expresseth in another place thus.