sition,
give themselves up at last to the mercy of medicine and submit to certain
rules of living, which they are for the future never to transgress; so he
who retires, weary of and disgusted with the common way of living, ought
to model this new one he enters into by the rules of reason, and to
institute and establish it by premeditation and reflection. He ought to
have taken leave of all sorts of labour, what advantage soever it may
promise, and generally to have shaken off all those passions which
disturb the tranquillity of body and soul, and then choose the way that
best suits with his own humour:

"Unusquisque sua noverit ire via."

In husbandry, study, hunting, and all other exercises, men are to proceed
to the utmost limits of pleasure, but must take heed of engaging further,
where trouble begins to mix with it. We are to reserve so much
employment only as is necessary to keep us in breath and to defend us
from the inconveniences that the other extreme of a dull and stupid
laziness brings along with it. There are sterile knotty sciences,
chiefly hammered out for the crowd; let such be left to them who are
engaged in the world's service. I for my part care for no other books,
but either such as are pleasant and easy, to amuse me, or those that
comfort and instruct me how to regulate my life and death:

"Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem, quidquid dignum sapienti bonoque est."

["Silently meditating in the healthy groves, whatever is worthy
of a wise and good man."--Horace, Ep., i. 4, 4.]

Wiser men, having great force and vigour of soul, may propose to
themselves a rest wholly spiritual but for me, who have a very ordinary
soul, it is very necessary to support myself with bodily conveniences;
and age having of late deprived me of those pleasures that were more
acceptable to me, I instruct and whet my appetite to those that remain,
more suitable to this other reason. We ought to hold with all our force,
both of hands and teeth, the use of the pleasures of life that our years,
one after another, snatch away from us:

"Carpamus dulcia; nostrum est,
Quod vivis; cinis, et manes, et fabula fies."

["Let us pluck life's sweets, 'tis for them we live: by and by we
shall be ashes, a ghost, a mere subject of talk."
--Persius, Sat., v. 151.]

Now, as to the end that Pliny and Cicero propo