With rev’rend awe regard the bending sage,
Nor thoughtless mock th’ infirmities of age.
Reflection.
We are all born to die, and it is every jot as certain that we shall go out of the world, as that we are already come into it: we are helpless in infancy; ungovernable in youth; our strength and vigour scarce outlast a morning sun; our infirmities hasten upon us as our years advance, and we grow helpless in our old age as in our infancy. What, then, have the best of us to boast of? Even time and human frailty alone will bring us to our end without the help of any accidents or distempers; so that our decays are as much the works of nature, as the first principles of our being; and the young man’s conceit of the crooked bow is no better than an irreverent way of making sport with the course of Providence; besides shewing the folly of scoffing at that in another which he himself was sure to come to at last, or worse.
Fable XLIII.
The Splenetic Traveller.
A splenetic and a facetious man were once upon a journey: the former went slugging on with a thousand cares and troubles in his head, exclaiming over and over: “Lord, what shall I do to live?” The other jogged merrily away, and left his matters to Providence and good fortune. “Well, brother,” says the sorrowful wight, “how can you be so frolicksome now? As I am a sinner, my heart’s e’en ready to break for fear I should want bread.” “Come, come,” says the other, “fall back, fall edge, I have fixed my resolution, and my mind’s at rest.” “Ay, but for all that,” says the other, “I have known the confidence of as resolute people as yourself has deceived them in the conclusion;” and so the poor man fell into another fit of doubting and musing, till he started out of it all on a sudden: “Good Sir!” says he, “what if I should fall blind?” and so he walked a good way before his companion with his eyes shut, to try how it would be if that misfortune should befall him. In this interim, his fellow-traveller, who followed him, found a purse of money upon the way, which rewarded his trust in Providence; whereas the other missed that encounter as a punishment of his distrust; for the purse had been his, as he went first, if he had not put himself out of condition of seeing it.