enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody; and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit); this innocent deceiver of the word, as Horace calls him, this Muta Persona, I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well. _Seneca_, _ex Thyeste_, _Act 2_. _ Chor._ _Stet quicunque volet_, _potens_, _Aulæ culmine lubrico_; _etc._ Upon the slippery tops of human state, The gilded pinnacles of fate, Let others proudly stand, and for a while, The giddy danger to beguile, With joy and with disdain look down on all, Till their heads turn, and down they fall. Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near That I no fall to earth may fear, And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat From the long ruins of the great! Here wrapped in the arms of quiet let me lie, Quiet, companion of obscurity. Here let my life, with as much silence slide, As time that measures it does glide. Nor let the breath of infamy or fame, From town to town echo about my name; Nor let my homely death embroidered be With scutcheon or with elegy. An old plebeian let me die, Alas, all then are such, as well as I. To him, alas, to him, I fear, The face of death will terrible appear; Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride By being known to all the world beside, Does not himself, when he is dying, know; Nor what he is, nor whither he’s to go. OF AGRICULTURE.