I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I can not say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbors 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 world, 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. II OF PROCRASTINATION[94] I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long detained me. But, nevertheless, you say (which _but_ is _aerugo mera_, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon)--but you say you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might accord me--according to the saying of that person, whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man--_cum dignitate otium_. This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there's no fooling with life, when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game; 'tis a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine.