were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their preparations; they
have made it slip and steal away in the height of their accustomed
diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of consolation, no
mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of constancy, no talk
of their future condition; amongst sports, feastings, wit, and mirth,
common and indifferent discourses, music, and amorous verses. Were it
not possible for us to imitate this resolution after a more decent
manner? Since there are deaths that are good for fools, deaths good for
the wise, let us find out such as are fit for those who are betwixt both.
My imagination suggests to me one that is easy, and, since we must die,
to be desired. The Roman tyrants thought they did, in a manner, give a
criminal life when they gave him the choice of his death. But was not
Theophrastus, that so delicate, so modest, and so wise a philosopher,
compelled by reason, when he durst say this verse, translated by Cicero:

"Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia?"

["Fortune, not wisdom, sways human life."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 31.]

Fortune assists the facility of the bargain of my life, having placed it
in such a condition that for the future it can be neither advantage nor
hindrance to those who are concerned in me; 'tis a condition that I would
have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of trussing up
my baggage, I am particularly pleased that in dying I shall neither do
them good nor harm. She has so ordered it, by a cunning compensation,
that they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will,
at the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death sometimes is
more grievous to us, in that it is grievous to others, and interests us
in their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more.