Ovid, the old heroes, and the Stoics, who were Ovid, Trist i. ii. 51, 52. so afraid of drowning, as dreading thereby the extinction of their soul, which they conceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear of an easier way of death; wherein the water, entering the possessions of air, makes a temperate suffocation, and kills, as it were, without a fever. Surely many who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been ingenious in the contrivance thereof. 'Twas a dull way practised by Themistocles, to overwhelm himself with bull's Vide blood, who being an Athenian, might have held an easier theory of death from the state potion of his country; from which Socrates, in Plato, seemed not to suffer much more than from the fit of an ague. Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his delivery, not in the point, but the pummel of his sword.* The Egyptians were merciful contrivers, who destroyed their malefactors by asps, charming their senses into an invincible sleep, and killing as it were with Hermes his rod. The Turkish emperor, odious for other cruelty, was herein a remarkable master of mercy, killing his favourite in his sleep, and sending him from the * Wherein he is said to have carried something, whereby upon a struggle or despair he might deliver himself from all misfortunes. Juvenal says it was carried in a ring. Sat. x. 165. Plutarch. shade into the house of darkness. He who had been thus destroyed would hardly have bled at the presence of his destroyer: when men are already dead by metaphor, and pass but from one sleep unto another, wanting herein the eminent part of severity to feel themselves to die; and escaping the sharpest attendant of death, the lively apprehension thereof. But to learn to die is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find some ways to untie or cut the most Gordian knots of life, and make men's miseries as mortal as themselves; whereas evil spirits, as undying substances, are inseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and, bound up with immortality, can never get out of themselves. PART III. T is hard to find a whole age to imi- approvable than others; but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly to be found in all. History sets down not only things laudable, but abominable; things which should never have been, or never have been known; so that noble patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons, rather than whole nations; and from whole nations rather than any one. The world was early bad, and the first sin the most deplorable of any. The younger world afforded the oldest men, and perhaps the best and the worst, when length of days made virtuous habits heroical and immovable; vicious, inveterate and irreclaimable. And since 't is said that the imaginations of Gen. vi. 5 their hearts were evil, only evil, and continu ally evil; it may be feared that their sins held pace with their lives, and their longevity swelling their impieties, the longanimity of God would no longer endure such vivacious abominations. Their impieties were surely of a deep dye, which required the whole Element of Water to wash them away, and overwhelmed their memories with themselves; and so shut up the first windows of Time, leaving no histories of those longevous generations, when men might have been properly historians, when Adam might have read long lectures unto Methuselah, and Methuselah unto Noah. For had we been happy in just historical accounts of that unparalleled world, we might have been acquainted with wonders, and have understood not a little of the acts and undertakings of Moses his mighty men, and men of renown of old, which might have enlarged our thoughts, and made the world older unto us. For the unknown part of time shortens the estimation, if not the compute of it. What hath escaped our knowledge, falls not under our consideration; and what is and will be latent, is little better than non-existent. II. Some things are dictated for our instruction, some acted for our imitation; wherein it is best to ascend unto the highest conformity, and to the honour of the exemplar. He honours God, who imitates him;* for what we virtuously imitate we approve and admire; and since we delight not to imitate inferiors, we aggrandize and magnify those we imitate; since also we are most apt to imitate those we love, we testify our affection in our imitation of the inimitable. To affect to be like, may be no imitation; to act, and not to be what we pretend to imitate, is but a mimical conformation, and carrieth no virtue in it. Lucifer imitated not God, when he said he would be like the Highest; and he imitated not Jupiter, who counterfeited Salmoneus. thunder. Where imitation can go no farther, vi. 585. let admiration step on, whereof there is no end in the wisest form of men. Even angels and spirits have enough to admire in their sublimer natures; admiration being the act of the creature, and not of God, who doth not admire himself. Created natures allow of swelling hyperboles; nothing can be said hyperbolically of God, nor will his attributes admit of expressions above their own exuperances. Trisme "He prayeth well, who loveth well For the dear God who loveth us, COLERIDGE. Virg. Æn. Cf. St. Matt. vi. 12, 14, 15. |