h, _qui servire non cogitur_. Thou carriest no burdens,
thou art no prisoner, no drudge, and thousands want that liberty, those
pleasures which thou hast. Thou art not sick, and what wouldst thou have?
But _nitimur in vetitum_, we must all eat of the forbidden fruit. Were we
enjoined to go to such and such places, we would not willingly go: but
being barred of our liberty, this alone torments our wandering soul that we
may not go. A citizen of ours, saith [3852]Cardan, was sixty years of age,
and had never been forth of the walls of the city of Milan; the prince
hearing of it, commanded him not to stir out: being now forbidden that
which all his life he had neglected, he earnestly desired, and being
denied, _dolore confectus mortem, obiit_, he died for grief.

What I have said of servitude, I again say of imprisonment, we are all
prisoners. [3853]What is our life but a prison? We are all imprisoned in an
island. The world itself to some men is a prison, our narrow seas as so
many ditches, and when they have compassed the globe of the earth, they
would fain go see what is done in the moon. In [3854]Muscovy and many other
northern parts, all over Scandia, they are imprisoned half the year in
stoves, they dare not peep out for cold. At [3855]Aden in Arabia they are
penned in all day long with that other extreme of heat, and keep their
markets in the night. What is a ship but a prison? And so many cities are
but as so many hives of bees, anthills; but that which thou abhorrest, many
seek: women keep in all winter, and most part of summer, to preserve their
beauties; some for love of study: Demosthenes shaved his beard because he
would cut off all occasions from going abroad: how many monks and friars,
anchorites, abandon the world. _Monachus in urbe, piscis in arido_. Art in
prison? Make right use of it, and mortify thyself; [3856] "Where may a man
contemplate better than in solitariness," or study more than in quietness?
Many worthy men have been imprisoned all their lives, and it hath been
occasion of great honour and glory to them, much public good by their
excellent meditation. [3857]Ptolomeus king of Egypt, _cum viribus
attenuatis infirma valetudine laboraret, miro descendi studio affectus_,
&c. now being taken with a grievous infirmity of body that he could not
stir abroad, became Strato's scholar, fell hard to his book, and gave
himself wholly to contemplation, and upon that occasion (as mine author
adds), _pulcherrimu