Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined-circle[97] must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the _Opium_ of time, which temporally considereth all things; Our Fathers finde their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our Survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce fourty yeers:[98] Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oakes. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in _Gruter_,[99] to hope for Eternity by Ænigmatical Epithetes, or first letters of our names, to be studied by Antiquaries, who we were, and have new Names given us like many of the Mummies, are cold consolations unto the Students of perpetuity, even by everlasting Languages. [97] Θ _The character of death._ [98] _Old ones being taken up, and other bodies laid under them._ [99] Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquæ To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in _Cardan_:[100] disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgement of himself, who cares to subsist like _Hippocrates_ Patients, or _Achilles_ horses in _Homer_, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsame of our memories, the _Entelechia_ and soul of our subsistences. To be namelesse in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The _Canaanitish_ woman lives more happily without a name, then _Herodias_ with one. And who had not rather have been the good theef, then _Pilate_? [100] Cuperem notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim. _Card._ in vita propria. But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? _Herostratus_ lives that burnt the Temple of _Diana_, he is almost lost that built it; Time hath spared the Epitaph of _Adrians_ horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and _Thersites_ is like to live as long as _Agamemnon_. Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, then any that stand remembred in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting Register the first man had been as unknown as the last, and _Methuselahs_ long life had been his only Chronicle.