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Saturn as Judg, he gave this arbitrement, His name shall be Homo ab humo, Cura eum possideat quamdiu vivat, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and Tellus his body when he dies. But to leave tales. A general cause, a continuate cause, an inseparable accident to all men, is discontent, care, misery; were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?) to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery, were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and cution. For to begin at the hour of his birth, as Pliny doth elegantly describe it," He is born naked, and falls a whining at the very first, he is swadled and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself, and so he continues to his lives end." Cujusque fere pabulum, saith Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labor, impatient of idleness, exposed to Fortune's contumelies. To a naked Marriner Lucretius compares him, cast on shore by shipwrack, cold and comfortless in an unknown Land: + No estate, age, sex, can secure himself from this common misery. "A man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble," Job 14, 1, 22. "and while his flesh is upon him, he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him, it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow, and his travels griefs, his heart also taketh not rest in the night," Ecclus. 2. 23. And 2. 11. "All that is in it, is sorrow and vexation of spirit. Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike: Blindness seizeth on us in the beginning, labor in the middle, grief in the end; error in all. What day ariseth to us, without some grief, care, or anguish? Or what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen, that hath not been overcast before the evening?" One is miserable, another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. Aliquando nervi, aliquando pedes vesant, (Seneca) nunc distillatio, nunc epatis morbus; nunc deest, nunc superest sanguis: Now the Head akes, then the Feet, now the Lungs, then the Liver, &c. Huic sensus exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis, &c. He is rich, but base born; he is noble, but poor; a third hath means, but he wants health peradventure, or wit to manage his estate: Children vex one, Wife a second, &c. Nemo facilè cum conditione suá con

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Lib. 7. nat. hist. cap. 1. hominem nudum, & ad vagitum edit natura. Flens ab initio, devinctus jacet, &c. • Δακρυ χέων γενίμιν, καὶ δακρυτας επιθύκοκα, τῶ γενΘ- άνθρωπων πολυδάκρυτον, ἀσθενὲς ὁικρόν. Lachry

mans natus sum, & lachrymans morior, &c. *Ad Marinum. + Boethius. Initium cæcitas, progressum labor, exitum dolor, crror omnia: quem tranquillum quæso, quem non laboriosum aut anxium d'em egimus? Petrarch.

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cordat,

cordat, no man is pleased with his fortune, a pound of sorrow is familiarly mixt with a dram of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but every where danger, contention, anxiety, in all places: Go where thou wilt, and thou shalt finde discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, incumbrances, exclamations: "If thou look into the Market, there (saith *Chrysostom) is brawling and contention; if to the Court, there knavery and flattery, &c. if to a private man's house, there's cark and care, heaviness, &c." As he said of old,

❝k Nil homine in terrâ spirat miserum magis almâ?

No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, "1in miseries of body, in miseries of minde, miseries of heart, in miseries asleep, in miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns," as Bernard found, Nunquid tentatio est vita humana super terram? A meer temptation is our life, (Austin. confess. lib. 1o. cap. 28.) catena perpetuorum malorum, & quis potest molestias & difficultates pati? Who can endure the miseries of it?"+ In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable. In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity; What mediocrity may be found? where is no temptation? what condition of life is free? " Wisdom hath labor annexed to it, glory envy; riches and cares, children and incumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggery go together: As if a man were therefore born, (as the Platonists hold) to be punished in this life, for some precedent sins." Or that, as Pliny complains, "Nature may be rather accounted a step-mother, then a mother unto us, all things considered: No creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious; onely man is plagued with envy, discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superstition." "Our whole life is an Irish Sea, wherein there is naught to be expected, but tempestuous storms, and troublesom waves, and those infinite,

Ubique periculum, ubique dolor, ubique naufragium, in hoc ambitu quocunq; me vertam. Lypsins. *Hom. 10. Si inforum iveris, ibi rixæ, et pugnæ; si in curia, ibi fraus, adulatio; si in domum privatam, &c. * Homer. Multis repletur homo miseriis, corporis miseriis, animi miser is, dum dormit, dum vigilat, quocunq; se vertit. Lususq; rerum, temporumq; nascimur. + Ia blandiente fortuna intolerandi, in calamitatibus lugubres, semper stulti et miseri, Cardan. Prospera in adversis desidero, et adversa prosperis timco, quis inter hæc medius locus, ubi non fit humanæ vitæ tentatio? n Cardan. consol. Sapicntiæ Labor annexus, gloriæ invidia, divitiis curæ, soboli solici tudo, voluptati morbi, quieti paupertas, ut quasi fruendorum scelerum causa nasci hominem pessis cum Platonistis agnoscere. Lib. 7. cap. 1. Non satis æstimare, an melior parens natura homini, an tristior noverca fuerit: Nulli fragilior vita, pavor, confusio, rabies major, uni animantium ambitio data, luctus, avaritia, uni superstitio.

"P Tantam

❝p Tantum malorum pelagus aspicio,

Ut non sit inde enatandi copia.'

no Halcyonian times, wherein a man can hold himself secure, or agree with his present estate: but as Boethius infers, "There is something in every one of us, which before tryal we seek, and having tryed abhor: We earnestly wish, and eagerly covet, and are eftsoons weary of it." Thus betwixt hope and fear, suspitions, angers,

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Inter spemque metumque, timores inter & iras," betwixt falling in, falling out, &c. we bangle away our best days, befool out our times, we lead a contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life; insomuch, that if we could foretel what was to come, and it put to our choice, we should rather refuse, then accept of this painful life. In a word, the World it self is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of theeves, cheaters, &c. full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and follow one another, as the Sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labor, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, duram servientes servitutem, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moystness from water, brightness from the Sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger from a man. Our Towns and Cities are but so many dwellings of humane misery. "In which grief and sorrow (as he right well observes out of Solon) innumerable troubles, labors of mortal men, and all maner of vices, are included, as in so many pens." Our villages are like mole-hills, and men as so many Emots, busie, busie still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several Sea-cards cut each other in a Globe or Map. "Now light and merry, but (" as one follows it) by-and-by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now patient, to morrow crying out; now pale, then red; running, sitting, sweating, trembling, halting," &c. Some few amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis, in

P Euripides.

De consol. 1. 2. Nemo facilè cum conditione sua concordat, inest singulis quod imperiti petant, experti horreant. Esse in honore juvat, mox displicet. • Hor. 'Borrheus in 6. Job. Urbes et oppida nihil aliud sunt quam humanarum ærumnarum domicilia, quibus luctus et moeror, et mortalium varii infinitique labores, et omnis generis vitia, quasi septis includuntur. "Nat Chytreus de lit. Europæ. Lætus nunc, mox tristis; nunc sperans, paulo post diffidens; patiens hodie, cras ejulans; nunc pallens, rubens, currens, sedens, claudicans, tremens, &c.

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the World's esteem, Galline filius albe, an happy and fortunate man, ad invidiam felix, because rich, fair, well allied, in honor and office; yet peradventure ask himself, and he will say, That of all others he is most miserable and unhappy. A fair shooe, Hic soccus novus, elegans, as he said, sed nescis ubi urat, but thou knowest not where it pincheth. It is not another man's opinion can make me happy; but as Seneca well hath it, "He is a miserable wretch that doth not account himself happy, though he be Soveraign Lord of a world; he is not happy, if he think himself not to be so: for what availeth it what thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thy self dislike it?" A common humor it is of all men to think well of other mens fortunes, and dislike their own: Cui placet alterius, sua nimirum est odio sors: but qui fit Mecanas, &c. how comes it to pass, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing, (saith Theodoret) "neither with riches, nor poverty, they complain when they are well, and when they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity; they are troubled in a cheap yeer, in a barren, plenty or not plenty, nothing pleaseth them, war nor peace, with children, nor without.' This for the most part is the humor of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and shew me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise? Quintus Metellus his felicity is infinitely admired amongst the Romans, insomuch, that as "Paterculus mentioneth of him, you can scarce finde of any Nation, order, age, sex, one for happiness to be compared unto him: he had in a word, Bona animi, corporis & fortune, goods of minde, body, and fortune, so had P. Mutianus Crassus. Lampsaca that Lacedemonian Lady, was such another in Plinie's conceit, A King's wife, a King's mother, a King's daughter: And all the world esteemed as much of Polycrates of Samos. The Greeks brag of their Socrates, Phocyon, Aristides; the Psophidians in particular of their Aglaus, Ómni vitá felix, ab omni periculo immunis (which by the way Pausanias held impossible); the Romans of their & Cato,

*Sua cuiq; calamitas præcipua.

Hor. Ser. 1. Sat. 1.

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y Cn. Græcinus. * Epist. 9. 1. 7. Miser est qui se beatissimum non judicat, licet imperet mundo non est beatus, qui se non putat: quid enim refert qualis status tuus sit, si tibi videtur malus. Hor, ep. 1. 1. 4. Lib. de curat. græc. affect. cap. 6. de provident. Multis nihil placet atque adeo et divitias damnant,, et paupertatem, de morbis expostulant, bene valentes graviter ferunt, atque ut semel dicam, nihil eos delectat, &c. Vix ullius gentis, ætatis, ordinis, hominem invenies cujus felicitatem fortunæ Metelli compares, Vol. 1. P. Crassus Mutianus, quinque habuisse dicitur rerum bonarum maxima, quod esset ditissimus, quod esset nobilissimus, eloquentissimus, Jurisconsultissimus, Pontifex maximus. f Lib. 7. Regis filia, Regis uxor, Regis mater. & Qui nibil unquam mali aut dixit, aut fecit, aut sensit, qui bene semper fecit, quod allter facre non potuit.

Curius,

Curius, Fabricius, for their composed fortunes, and retired es. tates, government of passions, and contempt of the world: yet none of all these was happy, or free from discontent, neither Metellus, Crassus, nor Polycrates, for he died a violent death, and so did Cato: And how much evil doth Lactantius and Theodoret speak of Socrates, a weak man, and so of the rest. There is no content in this life, but as he said, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit;" lame and imperfect. Hadst thou Sampson's hair, Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arme, Solomon's wisdome, Absolon's beauty, Croesus's wealth, Pasetis obulum, Cæsar's valor, Alexander's spirit, Tullie's or Demosthenes eloquence, Gyges ring, Perseus' Pegasus, aud Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this would not make thee absolute; give thee content, and true happiness in this life, or so continue it. Even in the midst of all our mirth, jollity and laughter, is sorrow and grief: or if there be truc happiness amongst us, 'tis but for a time,

"Desinat in piscem mulier formosa supernè:"

a fair morning turns to a lowring afternoon. Brutus and Cassius, once renowned, both eminently happy, yet you shall scarce finde two (saith Paterculus) quos fortuna maturiùs destiturit, whom fortune sooner forsook. Hannibal, a conqueror all his life, met with his match, and was subdued at last,

"Occurrit forti, qui magè fortis erit."

One is brought in triumph, as Cæsar into Rome, Alcibiades into Athens, coronis aureis donatus, crowned, honored, admired; by-and-by his statues demolished, he hissed out, massacred, &c. Magnus Gonsalva, that famous Spaniard, was of the Prince and people at first honored, approved; forthwith confined and banished. Admirandas actiones; graves plerunque sequuntur invidiæ, & acres calumniæ: 'tis Polybius his observation, grievous enmities, and bitter calumnies, commonly follow renowned actions. One is born rich, dies a beggar: sound to day, sick to morrow: now in mest flourishing estate, fortunate and happy, by-and-by deprived of his goods by forragin enemies, robbed by theeves, spoiled, captivated, impoverished, as they of "Rabbah put under iron sawes, and under iron harrowes, and under axes of iron, and cast into the tile kiln,"

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