to stir the appetite. So figs are accounted fairest and ripest then,
when they begin to shrink, and wither as it were. So ripe olives,
when they are next to putrefaction, then are they in their proper beauty.
The hanging down of grapes--the brow of a lion, the froth of a foaming
wild boar, and many other like things, though by themselves considered,
they are far from any beauty, yet because they happen naturally, they both
are comely, and delightful; so that if a man shall with a profound mind
and apprehension, consider all things in the world, even among all those
things which are but mere accessories and natural appendices as it were,
there will scarce appear anything unto him, wherein he will not find
matter of pleasure and delight. So will he behold with as much pleasure
the true rictus of wild beasts, as those which by skilful painters
and other artificers are imitated. So will he be able to perceive
the proper ripeness and beauty of old age, whether in man or woman:
and whatsoever else it is that is beautiful and alluring in whatsoever is,
with chaste and continent eyes he will soon find out and discern.
Those and many other things will he discern, not credible unto every one,
but unto them only who are truly and familiarly acquainted, both with
nature itself, and all natural things.

III. Hippocrates having cured many sicknesses, fell sick himself
and died. The Chaldeans and Astrologians having foretold the deaths
of divers, were afterwards themselves surprised by the fates.
Alexander and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar, having destroyed so many towns,
and cut off in the field so many thousands both of horse and foot,
yet they themselves at last were fain to part with their own lives.
Heraclitus having written so many natural tracts concerning the last
and general conflagration of the world, died afterwards all filled
with water within, and all bedaubed with dirt and dung without.
Lice killed Democritus; and Socrates, another sort of vermin,