race, Od., iii. 10, 9.]
My face and eyes presently discover my condition; all my alterations
begin there, and appear somewhat worse than they really are; my friends
often pity me before I feel the cause in myself. My looking-glass does
not frighten me; for even in my youth it has befallen me more than once
to have a scurvy complexion and of ill augury, without any great
consequence, so that the physicians, not finding any cause within
answerable to that outward alteration, attributed it to the mind and to
some secret passion that tormented me within; but they were deceived.
If my body would govern itself as well, according to my rule, as my mind
does, we should move a little more at our ease. My mind was then not
only free from trouble, but, moreover, full of joy and satisfaction,
as it commonly is, half by its complexion, half by its design:
"Nec vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis."
["Nor do the troubles of the body ever affect my mind."
--Ovid, Trist., iii. 8, 25.]
I am of the opinion that this temperature of my 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
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