terrors.--[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.]




CHAPTER XVIII

THAT MEN ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL AFTER DEATH.

[Charron has borrowed with unusual liberality from this and the
succeeding chapter. See Nodier, Questions, p. 206.]

"Scilicet ultima semper
Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."

["We should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called
happy till he is dead and buried."--Ovid, Met, iii. 135]

The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who
being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was
going to execution cried out, "O Solon, Solon!" which being presently
reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant,
Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon had
formerly given him true to his cost; which was, "That men, however
fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they
had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives," by reason of the
uncertainty and mutability of human things, which, upon very light and
trivial occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a quite
contrary condition. And so it was that Agesilaus made answer to one who