was with him; nay, even his own wife, though she could have kept
any secret, used to go too. Casting his eyes round the room, "Why,"
he exclaimed, "do you suppose I endure life so long under these
cruel agonies? It is with the hope that I may outlive, at least for
one day, that villain." Had his bodily strength been equal to his
resolution, he would have carried his desire into practical effect.
God heard and answered his prayer; and when he felt that he
should now die a free, un-enslaved, Roman, he broke through
those other great, but now less forcible, attachments to the world.
His malady increased; arid, as it now grew too violent to admit of
any relief from temperance, he resolutely determined to put an end
to its uninterrupted attacks, by an effort of heroism. He had
refused all sustenance during four days when his wife Hispulla
sent our common friend Geminius to me, with the melancholy
news, that Corellius was resolved to die; and that neither her own
entreaties nor her daughter's could move him from his purpose; I
was the only person left who could reconcile him to life. I ran to
his house with the utmost precipitation. As I approached it, I met a
second messenger from Hispulla, Julius Atticus, who informed me
there was nothing to be hoped for now, even from me, as he
seemed more hardened than ever in his purpose. He had said,
indeed to his physician, who pressed him to take some
nourishment, "'Tis resolved": an expression which, as it raised my
admiration of the greatness of his soul, so it does my grief for the
loss of him. I keep thinking what a friend, what a man, I am
deprived of. That he had reached his sixty-seventh year, an age
which even the strongest seldom exceed, I well know; that he is
teleased from a life of continual pan; that he has left his dearest
friends behind him, and (what was dearer to him than all these) the
state in a prosperous condition: all this I know. Still I cannot