im, but going
out, and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance,
what misery soever befell him," (if we may believe Plato his disciple) was
much tormented with it. Q. Metellus, in whom [928]Valerius gives instance
of all happiness, "the most fortunate man then living, born in that most
flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well
qualified, healthful, rich, honourable, a senator, a consul, happy in his
wife, happy in his children," &c. yet this man was not void of melancholy,
he had his share of sorrow. [929]Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring
into the sea, because he would participate of discontent with others, and
had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as
he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can cure
himself; the very gods had bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their
own [930]poets put upon them. In general, [931]"as the heaven, so is our
life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a
rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer
sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is
our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: _Invicem
cedunt dolor et voluptas_," there is a succession of pleasure and pain.

[932] ------"medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, in ipsis floribus angat."

"Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow," (as [933]Solomon holds):
even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as [934]Austin infers in
his _Com. on the 41st Psalm_, there is grief and discontent. _Inter
delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulat_, for a pint of honey thou
shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of
pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these
miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous for any
mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in his life. Nothing
so prosperous and pleasant, but it hath [935]some bitterness in it, some
complaining, some grudging; it is all [Greek: glukupikron], a mixed
passion, and like a chequer table black and white: men, families, cities,
have their falls and wanes; now trines, sextiles, then quartiles and
oppositions. We are not here as those angels, celestial powers and bodies,
sun and moon, to finish our course without all offence, with such
constancy, to continue