A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy’s wish in a copy of verses to the same effect. Well then; I now do plainly see, This busy world and I shall ne’er agree, etc. And I never then proposed to myself another advantage from His Majesty’s happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it. Thou, neither great at court nor in the war, Nor at th’ exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; Content thyself with the small barren praise, Which neglected verse does raise, etc. However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it _A corps perdu_, without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, “Take thy ease”: I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. _Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum_. Nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. —_Nec vos_, _dulcissima mundi_ _Nomina_, _vos Musæ_, _libertas_, _otia_, _libri_, _Hortique sylvesque anima remanente relinquam_. Nor by me e’er shall you, You of all names the sweetest, and the best, You Muses, books, and liberty, and rest; You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be, As long as life itself forsakes not me. But this is a very petty ejaculation. Because I have concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last. MARTIAL, LIB. 10, EP. 47. _Vitam quæ faciunt beatiorem_, _etc._