[871] 'Inde illud Maecenatis turpissimum votum, quo et debilitatem non recusat, et deformitatem, et novissime acutam crucem dummodo inter haec mala spiritus prorogetur.
"Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa;
Tuber adstrue gibberum,
Lubricos quate dentes;
Vita dum superest, bene est;
Hanc mihi vel acuta
Si sedeam cruce sustine."'
Seneca's Epistles, No. 101.
Dryden makes Gonsalvo say in The Rival Ladies, act iv. sc. 1:—
'For men with horrour dissolution meet,
The minutes e'en of painful life are sweet.'
In Paradise Lost Moloch and Belial take opposite sides on this point:—
MOLOCH.
'What doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential; happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being.'
Bk. ii. 1. 94.
BELIAL.
'Who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?'
1. 146.