nty good years to come. Fool that thou art! who has
assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians'
tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common
course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary
favour; thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that
it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they
arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of those who have
ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account, and I dare
lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after
five-and-thirty years of age. It is full both of reason and piety, too,
to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended
His life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more
than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways
has death to surprise us?

"Quid quisque, vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas."

["Be as cautious as he may, man can never foresee the danger that
may at any hour befal him."--Hor. O. ii. 13, 13.]

To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a duke
of Brittany,--[Jean II. died 1305.]--should be pressed to death in a
crowd as that duke was at the entry of Pope Clement, my neighbour, into
Lyons?--[Montaigne speaks of him as if he had been a contemporary
neighbour, perhaps because he was the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Bertrand
le Got was Pope under the title of Clement V., 1305-14.]--Hast thou not
seen one of our kings--[Henry II., killed in a tournament, July 10,
1559]--killed at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by
jostle of a hog?--[Philip, eldest son of Louis le Gros.]--AEschylus,
threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to
avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise
falling out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a
grape-stone;--[Val. Max., ix. 12, ext. 2.]--an emperor killed with
the scratch of a comb in combing his head. AEmilius Lepidus with a
stumble at his own threshold,--[Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 33.]--
and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the
council-chamber. And betwixt the very thighs of women, Cornelius Gallus
the proctor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico, son of
Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse exa