"Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere, durent,
Felix esse mori."*
We're all deluded, vainly searching ways
To make us happy by the length of days;
For cunningly, to make's protract this breath,
The gods conceal the happiness of death.


There be many excellent strains in that poet, where-
with his stoical genius hath liberally supplied him:
and truly there are singular pieces in the philosophy
of Zeno,<61> and doctrine of the stoics, which I perceive,
delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity: yet
herein are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be
his own assassin, and so highly extol the end and suicide
of Cato. This is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be
afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn
death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it
is then the truest valour to dare to live: and herein
religion hath taught us a noble example; for all the

* Pharsalia, iv. 519.

valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not
parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is
no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in
death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it.
"Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo;" I would
not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's