body is now so naturally declining to ill:

"In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"

["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious."
--Cicero, De Senec., c. 18.]

"Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil."

["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion."
--Ovid, De Ponto., i. 5, 18.]

I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more
tender now, and open throughout.

"Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent."

["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before."
--Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]

My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the
inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away
my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be
merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one
good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity. A melancholic and dull
tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am
not contented with it. If there be any person, any knot of good company
in country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who
can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle
and I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone: