fessions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or
security in any; on what course will you pitch, how resolve? to be a
divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be
a wrangler; to be a physician, [1791]_pudet lotii_, 'tis loathed; a
philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a beggar; a poet, _esurit_, an hungry
jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an
emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a
chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a [1792]liar; a tailor, a thief; a
serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the
pot's never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree
in the wood to hang himself; I can show no state of life to give content.
The like you may say of all ages; children live in a perpetual slavery,
still under that tyrannical government of masters; young men, and of riper
years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the world, to treachery,
falsehood, and cozenage,

[1793] ------"Incedit per ignes,
Suppositos cineri doloso,"

------"you incautious tread
On fires, with faithless ashes overhead."

[1794]old are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions,
_silicernia_, dull of hearing, weak sighted, hoary, wrinkled, harsh, so
much altered as that they cannot know their own face in a glass, a burthen
to themselves and others, after 70 years, "all is sorrow" (as David hath
it), they do not live but linger. If they be sound, they fear diseases; if
sick, weary of their lives: _Non est vivere, sed valere vita._ One
complains of want, a second of servitude, [1795]another of a secret or
incurable disease; of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death
of friends, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, [1796]
contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt, ingratitude, unkindness,
scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life, too many children, no
children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment,
oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, &c.

[1797] "Talia de genere hoc adeo sunt multa, loquacem ut
Delassare valent Fabium."------

"But, every various instance to repeat,
Would tire even Fabius of incessant prate."

Talking Fabius will be tired before he can tell half of them; they are the
subject of whole volumes, and shall (some of them) be more opportunely
dilated elsewhere. In t