having charged through them, without pursuing them to the utmost, he had his commission of general taken from him. Very honourably upon such an account, and for the shame it was to them upon necessity afterwards to restore him to his command, and then to see how much upon him depended their safety and honour: victory like a shadow attending him where-ever he went; and indeed the prosperity of his country, as being from him derived, died with him. CHAP. XCIV. OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS. THIS fagotting up of divers pieces, is so odly composed, that I never set pen to paper, but when I have too much idle time, and never any where but at home; so that it is compiled at several interruptions and intervals, as occasions keep me sometimes many months abroad. As to the rest, I never correct my first by any second conceptions. I peradventure may alter a word or so: but 'tis only to vary the phrase, and not to destroy my former meaning. I have a mind to represent the progress of my humour, that every one may see every piece as it came from the forge. I could wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice of the course of my mutations. A servant of mine, that I employ'd to transcribe for me, thought he had got a prize by stealing several pieces from me, wherewith he was best pleas'd; but it is my comfort, that he will be no greater a gainer, than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older by seven or eight years since I begun; neither has it been without some new acquisition; I have in that time, by the liberty of years, been acquainted with the stone, a long conversation, which time hardly wears off without some such inconvenience. I could have been glad, that of other infirmities age has to present long liv'd men, it had chosen some one that would have been more welcome to me, for it could not possibly have laid upon me a disease, for which, even from my infancy, I have had so great a horror; and it is in truth of all the accidents of old age, that of which I have ever been most afraid. I have often thought with my self, that I went on too far, and that in so long a voyage, I should at last run my self into some disadvantage; I perceiv'd, and have often enough declar'd, that it was time to knock off, and that death was to be cut off in the sound and living part, according to the Chirurgeons rule in amputations. And that nature made him pay very strict usury, who did not in due time pay the principal. And yet I was so far from being ready, that in eighteen months time, or thereabout, that I have been in this un PAIN NEED NOT PUT A WISE MAN INTO DESPAIR. 634 easie condition, I have so inur'd myself to it, as to be content to live on in it; and have found wherein to comfort my self, and to hope: so much are men enslav'd to their miserable being, that there is no condition so wretched they will not accept, provided they may live: according to that of Mæcenas. Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede coxa, Lubricos quate dentes, Vita dum superest, bene est.-Seneca Ep. 101. Maim both my hands and feet, break both legs and thighs, Let me but live, all's well enough he cries. And Tamberlain with his foolish humanity palliated the fantastick cruelty he exercis'd upon lepers, when he put all he could hear of to death, to deliver them, as he pretended, from the painful life they liv'd. For there was not one of them who would not rather have undergone a triple leprosie, than to be depriv'd of their being. And Antisthenes the stoick being very sick, and crying out, "who will deliver me from these evils?" Diogenes, who was come to visit him, "This," said he, presenting him a knife," presently if thou wilt:" "I do not mean from my life," he replied, "but from my disease." The sufferings that only attaque the mind; I am not so sensible of, as most other men; and that partly out of judgment: for the world looks upon several things as dreadful, or to be avoided at the expence of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly through a stupid and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition: but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet having long since foreseen them, though with a sight weak and delicate, and softened with the long and happy health and quiet, that God has been pleas'd to give me the greatest part of my time, I had in my imagination fancied them so insupportable, that in truth I was more afraid than I have since found I had cause; by which I am still more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the soul, as we employ them, more trouble the repose of life, than they are any way useful to it. I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the most mortal and the most irremediable of all diseases. I have already had the trial of five or six very long, and very painful fits, and yet I either flatter my self, or there is even in this estate what is very well to be endur'd by a man who has his soul free from the fear of death, and the menaces, conclusions and consequences, which physick is ever thundring in our ears. But the effect even of pain it self is not so sharp and intolerable as to put a man of understanding into impatience and despair. I have at least this advantage by my stone, that what I could not hitherto wholly prevail upon my self to resolve upon, as to reconciling and acquainting my self with death, it will perfect; for the more it presses upon and importunes me, I shall be so much the less afraid to die. I had already gone so far as only to love life for life's sake, but my pain will dissolve this intelligence; and God grant that in the end, should the sharpness of it be once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does not throw me into the other no less vicious extream, to desire and wish to die. Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes.-Mart. l. 10. Epig. 47. Neither to wish, nor fear to die. They are two passions to be fear'd, but the one has its remedy much nearer at hand than the other. As to the rest, I have always found the precept, that so exactly enjoyns a constant countenance, and so disdainful and indifferent a comportment in the toleration of infirmities to be meerly ceremonial. Why should philosophy, which only has respect to life and its effects, trouble it self about these external apparences? Let us leave that care to histories and masters of rhetorick, that set so great a value upon our gestures. Let her, in God's name, allow this vocal frailty, if it be neither cordial nor stomachical to the disease; and permit the ordinary ways of expressing grief by sighs, sobs, palpitations and turning pale, that nature has put out of our power. And provided the courage be undaunted, and the expressions not sounding of despair, let her be satisfied. What makes matter for the wringing of our hands, if we do not wring our thoughts? She forms us for our selves, not for others, to be, not to seem, let her be satisfied with governing our understandings, which she has taken upon her the care of instructing; that in the fury of the cholic she maintains the soul in a condition to know it self, and to follow its accustomed way; contending with, and enduring, not meanly truckling under pain; mov'd and heated, not subdu'd and conquer'd in the contention; but capable of discourse and other things to a certain degree. In so extream accidents, 'tis cruelty to require so exact a composedness. 'Tis no great matter what faces we cut, if we find any ease by it; if the body find it self reliev'd by complaining, let him go too; if agitation eases him, let him tumble and toss at pleasure; if he finds the disease evaporate (as some physicians hold that it helps women in delivery) extreamly to cry out, or if it do but amuse his torments, let him roar aloud. Let us not command this voice to sally, but stop it not. Epicurus does not only forgive his sage for crying out in torments, but advises him to it. "Pugiles etiam quum feriunt, in jactandis cæstibus ingemiscunt, quia profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vehementior."-Tusc. l. 2. "When men fight with clubs, they groan in laying on, because the whole strength of body goes along with the voice, and the blow is laid on with greater force." We have enough 636 THE DIFFICULTY OF APPEARING TO ENDURE PAIN QUIETLY. to do to deal with the disease, without troubling ourselves with these superfluous rules; which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see impatient in the assaults of this infirmity; for as to what concerns my self, I have pass'd it over hitherto with a little better countenance, and contented my self with grunting, without roaring out. Not nevertheless, that I put any greater restraint upon my self to maintain this exterior decency, for I make little account of such an advantage; I allow herein as much as the pain requires, but either my pains are not so excessive, or I have more than ordinary patience. I complain, I confess, and am a little impatient in a very sharp fit, but I do not arrive to such a degree of despair, as he who with Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus Resonando multum flebiles voces refert.-Tusc. l. 2. Howling, roaring, and a thousand noises, I relish my self in the midst of my dolor, and have always found that I was in a capacity to speak, think and give a rational answer as well as at any other time, but not so coldly and indifferently, being troubled and interrupted by the pain. When I am look'd upon by my visiters to be in the greatest torment, and that they therefore forbear to trouble me, I oft try my own strength, and my self set some discourse on foot, the most remote I can contrive from my present condition. I can do any thing upon a sudden endeavour, but it must not continue long. In the intervals from this excessive torment, when my uriters only languish without any great dolor, I presently feel my self in my wonted state, forasmuch as my soul takes no other alarm but what is sensible and corporal, which I certainly owe to the care I have had of preparing my self by meditation against such accidents : Laborum Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinaque surgit, Omnia præcepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi.-Æneid. l. 6. No face of pain, or labour, now can rise, I am a little roughly handled for a learner, and with a sudden and sharp alteration, being fallen in an instant from a very easie and happy condition of life in to the most uneasie and painful that can be imagin'd. For besides, that is is a discase very much to be fear'd in it self, it begins with me after a more sharp and severe manner than it uses to do with other men. My fits come so thick upon me, that I am scarcely ever at ease; and yet I have hitherto kept my mind so upright, that provided I can still continue it, I find my self in a much better condition of life than a thousand others, who have no fever, no other disease but what they create to themselves for want of meditation. There is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption; as this for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and are so courteous as to acknowledge, that there are in works of nature some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which our understanding cannot discover the means and causes; by this honest declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also believe us of those that we say we do understand. We need not trouble our selves to seek out miracles, and strange difficulties; methinks there are so incomprehensible wonders amongst the things that we ordinarily see, as surpass all difficulties of miracles. In the family of Lepidus at Rome, there were three, not successively, but by intervals, that were born with the same eye covered with a cartilage. At Thebes, there was a race that carried from their mothers womb the form of the head of a launce, and who was not born so, was look'd upon as illegitimate. 'Tis to be believed that I derive this infirmity from my father; for he died wonderfully tormented with a great stone in his bladder; he was never sensible of his disease till the sixty seventh year of his age, and before that had never felt any grudging or symptoms of it either in his reins, sides, or any other part; and had lived till then in a happy vigorous state of health, little subject to infirmities, and continued seven years after in this disease, and dyed a very painful death. I was born about five and twenty years before his disease seized him, and in the time of his most flourishing and healthful state of body, his third child in order of birth; where could his propension to this malady lie lurking all that while? And he being so far from the infirmity, how could that small part of his substance carry away so great an impression of its share? And how so concealed, that till five and forty years after I did not begin to be sensible of it? being the only one to this hour, amongst so many brothers and sisters, and all of one mother, that was ever troubled with it. He that can satisfie me in this point, I will believe him in as many other miracles as he pleases, always provided, that as their manner is, he does not give me a doctrine much more intricate and fantastick than the thing it self for current pay. Let the physicians a little excuse the liberty I take, for by this same infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I have received a hatred and contempt of their doctrine. The antipathy I have against their art is hereditary. My father lived threescore and fourteen years, my grandfather sixty nine, my great grandfather almost fourscore years, without ever tasting any sort of physick; and with them whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of a drugg. Physick is grounded upon experience and examples, so is my opinion. And is not this an express |