soul has often raised my
body from its lapses; this is often depressed; if the other be not brisk
and gay, 'tis at least tranquil and at rest. I had a quartan ague four
or five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, if
not calm, yet pleasant. If the pain be without me, the weakness and
languor do not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, that
beget a horror in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than a
thousand passions and agitations of the mind that I see about me. I make
up my mind no more to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do I
more complain of the natural decadence that I feel in myself:

"Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?"

["Who is surprised to see a swollen goitre in the Alps?"
--Juvenal, xiii. 162.]

than I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that of
an oak.

I have no reason to complain of my imagination; I have had few thoughts
in my life that have so much as broken my sleep, except those of desire,
which have awakened without afflicting me. I dream but seldom, and then
of chimaeras and fantastic things, commonly produced from pleasant
thoughts, and rather ridiculous than sad; and I believe it to be true
that dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is
art required to sort and understand them

"Res, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt,
Minus mirandum est."

["'Tis less wonder, what men practise, think, care for, see, and do
when waking, (should also run in their heads and disturb them when
they are asleep) and which affect their feelings, if they happen to
any in sleep."--Attius, cited in Cicero, De Divin., i. 22.]

Plato, moreover, says, that 'tis the office of prudence to draw
instructions of divination of future things from dreams: I don't know
about this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates,
Xenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate.
Historians say that the Atlantes never dream; who also never eat any
animal food, which I add, forasmuch as it is, peradventure, the reason
why they never dream, for Pythagoras ordered a certain preparation of
diet to beget appropriate dreams. Mine are very gentle, without any
agitation of body or expression of voice. I have seen several of my time
wonderfully d