Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo Multa: [Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Od. Xiv] To aime why are we ever bold, At many things in so short hold? For then we shall have worke sufficient, without any more accrease. Some man complaineth more that death doth hinder him from the assured course of an hoped for victorie, than of death it selfe; another cries out, he should give place to her, before he have married his daughter, or directed the course of his childrens bringing up; another bewaileth he must forgoe his wives company; another moaneth the losse of his children, the chiefest commodities of his being. I am now by meanes of the mercy of God in such a taking, that without regret or grieving at any worldly matter, I am prepared to dislodge, whensoever he shall please to call me: I am every where free: my farewell is soone taken of all my friends, except of my selfe. No man did ever pre pare himselfe to quit the world more simply and fully, or more generally spake of all thoughts of it, than I am assured I shall doe. The deadest deaths are the best. --Miser, de miser (aiunt) omnia ademit. Vna dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae: [Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 941.] O wretch, O wretch (friends cry), one day, All joyes of life hath tane away: And the builder, --manent (saith he) opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes. [Footnote: Virg. Aen. 1. iv. 88.] The workes unfinisht lie, And walls that threatned hie. A man should designe nothing so long afore-hand, or at least with such an intent, as to passionate[Footnote: Long passionately.] himselfe to see the end of it; we are all borne to be doing. Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus [Footnote: Ovid. Am. 1. ii. El. x. 36] When dying I my selfe shall spend, Ere halfe my businesse come to end. I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives offices as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I am setting my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden. I saw one die, who being at his last gaspe, uncessantly complained against his destinie, and that death should so unkindly cut him off in the middest of an historie which he had in hand, and was now come to the fifteenth or sixteenth of our Kings. Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum, Iam desiderium rerum super insidet uno. [Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 44.] Friends adde not that in this case, now no more Shalt thou desire, or want things wisht before. A man should rid himselfe of these vulgar and hurtful humours. Even as Churchyards were first place adjoyning unto churches, and in the most frequented places of the City, to enure (as Lycurgus said) the common people, women and children, not to be skared at the sight of a dead man, and to the end that continuall spectacle of bones, sculs, tombes, graves and burials, should forewarne us of our condition, and fatall end.