[4] From the Tatler.
[5] From the Tatler.
LORD BOLINGBROKE
Born in 1678, died in 1751; his name, before he was a peer, Henry St. John; entered Parliament in 1701, acting with the Tories; Secretary of War in 1704-08; Secretary of State in 1710-14; created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1714; opposed the accession of the House of Hanover, and on the death of Queen Anne in 1714, fled to France, entering the service of the Pretender, by whom he was soon dismissed and then returned to England; a friend of Pope and Swift, Pope's "Essay on Man" being addrest to him.
I
OF THE SHORTNESS OF HUMAN LIFE
I think very differently from most men of the time we have to pass, and the business we have to do, in this world. I think we have more of one, and less of the other, than is commonly supposed. Our want of time, and the shortness of human life, are some of the principal commonplace complaints which we prefer against the established order of things; they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathetic lamentations of the philosopher; but they are impertinent and impious in both. The man of business despises the man of pleasure for squandering his time away; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the man of business for the same thing; and yet both concur superciliously and absurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being for having given them so little time. The philosopher, who misspends it very often as much as the others, joins in the same cry, and authorizes this impiety. Theophrastus thought it extremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he had just learned how to live in it. His master Aristotle found fault with nature for treating man in this respect worse than several other animals; both very unphilosophically! and I love Seneca the better for his quarrel with the Stagirite[6] on this head.