O wretch, O wretch (friends cry), one day,
All joyes of life hath tane away:
And the builder,
—manent (saith he) opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes. [Footnote: Virg. Aen. 1. iv. 88.]
The workes unfinisht lie,
And walls that threatned hie.
A man should designe nothing so long afore-hand, or at least with such an intent, as to passionate[Footnote: Long passionately.] himselfe to see the end of it; we are all borne to be doing.
Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus
[Footnote: Ovid. Am. 1. ii. El. x. 36]
When dying I my selfe shall spend,
Ere halfe my businesse come to end.
I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives offices as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I am setting my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden. I saw one die, who being at his last gaspe, uncessantly complained against his destinie, and that death should so unkindly cut him off in the middest of an historie which he had in hand, and was now come to the fifteenth or sixteenth of our Kings.
Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum,
Iam desiderium rerum super insidet uno.
[Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 44.]
Friends adde not that in this case, now no more
Shalt thou desire, or want things wisht before.