["Nor do the troubles of the body ever affect my mind."
--Ovid, Trist., iii. 8, 25.]

I am of the opinion that this temperature of my soul has often raised my
body from its lapses; this is often depressed; if the other be not brisk
and gay, 'tis at least tranquil and at rest. I had a quartan ague four
or five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, if
not calm, yet pleasant. If the pain be without me, the weakness and
languor do not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, that
beget a horror in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than a
thousand passions and agitations of the mind that I see about me. I make
up my mind no more to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do I
more complain of the natural decadence that I feel in myself:

"Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?"

["Who is surprised to see a swollen goitre in the Alps?"
--Juvenal, xiii. 162.]

than I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that of
an oak.

I have no reason to complain of my imagination; I have had few thoughts
in my life that have so much as broken my sleep, except those of desire,
which have awakened without afflicting me. I dream but seldom, and then
of chimaeras and fantastic things, commonly produced from pleasant
thoughts, and rather ridiculous than sad; and I believe it to be true
that dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is
art required to sort and understand them