"Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo
Multa?"
["Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?"
—Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.]
for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition. One man complains, more than of death, that he is thereby prevented of a glorious victory; another, that he must die before he has married his daughter, or educated his children; a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son, as the principal comfort and concern of his being. For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please Him, without regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best:
"'Miser, O miser,' aiunt, 'omnia ademit
Una dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae.'"
["'Wretch that I am,' they cry, 'one fatal day has deprived me of
all joys of life.'"—Lucretius, iii. 911.]
And the builder,
"Manuet," says he, "opera interrupta, minaeque
Murorum ingentes."
["The works remain incomplete, the tall pinnacles of the walls
unmade."—AEneid, iv. 88.]
A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action:
"Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus."