Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But I fear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need. I wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from this correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and ladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied and asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not at the same time an equal proportion in the body too. Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health, such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant. It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit, and produce a contrary effect: "Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;" ["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing." (Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body." --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.] and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out, much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of my age. Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities and difficulties from our commerce: "Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:" ["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow." --Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.] "Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus." ["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant." --Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.] I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me: "Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:" ["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face."--Auctor Incert.] "Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos." ["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries." (Or:) "An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind." --Idem.]