Alcmena's nights,* and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the mal-content of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion. What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, † are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, ‡ and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their relicks, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition; and, finding no atropos unto the immortality of * One night as long as three. + The puzzling questions of Tiberius unto grammarians. — Marcel. Donatus in Suet. † Κλυτὰ ἔθνεα νεκρῶν.—Hom. Job. their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already out-lasted their monuments, and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time, we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias,* and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.† And therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no pro portion unto the other. It is too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that is past a moment. * That the world may last but six thousand years. + Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah, before that famous prince was extant. Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right lined circle* must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years.† Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read like bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies,§ are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages. To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan ; disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's patients, or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our subsistencies? To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infa * The character of death. + Old ones being taken up, and other bodies laid under them. Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquæ. § Which men show in several countries, giving them what names they please; and unto some the names of the old Egyptian kings, out of Herodotus. || Cuperem notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim.-Card. in vita propria. mous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than Pilate? But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be. not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle. Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twentyseven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans* could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, * Euripides. and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes;* since the brother of death1 daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;-diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.2 Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon * According to the custom of the Jews, who place a lighted wax-candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.-Leo. 1 the brother of death.] That is, sleep. See a Fragment On Dreams, pòst. 2 Diuturnity, &c.] Here may properly be noticed a similar passage which I find in MS. Sloan. 1848, fol. 194. "Large are the treasures of oblivion, and heaps of things in a state next to nothing almost numberless; much more is buried in silence than recorded, and the largest volumes are but epitomes of what hath been. The account of time began with night, and darkness still attendeth it. Some things never come to light; many have been delivered; but more have been swallowed in obscurity and the caverns of oblivion. How much is as it were in vacuo, and will never be cleared up, of those long living times when men could scarce remember themselves young; and men seem to us not ancient but antiquities, when they [lived] longer in their lives than we can now hope to do in our memories; when men feared not apoplexies and palsies after seven or eight hundred years; when living was so lasting that homicide might admit of distinctive qualifications from the age of the person, and it might seem a lesser injury to kill a man at eight hundred than at forty, and when life was so well worth the living that few or none would kill themselves." |