eaceae cantus
Somnum reducent."

["Sicilian dainties will not tickle their palates, nor the melody of
birds and harps bring back sleep."--Hor., Od., iii. 1, 18.]

Do you think they can relish it? and that the fatal end of their journey
being continually before their eyes, would not alter and deprave their
palate from tasting these regalios?

"Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum
Metitur vitam; torquetur peste futura."

["He considers the route, computes the time of travelling, measuring
his life by the length of the journey; and torments himself by
thinking of the blow to come."--Claudianus, in Ruf., ii. 137.]

The end of our race is death; 'tis the necessary object of our aim,
which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a
fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't; but from
what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must
bridle the ass by the tail:

"Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,"

["Who in his folly seeks to advance backwards"--Lucretius, iv. 474]

'tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright
people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it
were the name of the devil. And because the making a man's will is in
reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to
that purpose, till the physician has passed sentence upon and totally
given him over, and then betwixt and terror, God knows in how fit a
condition of understanding he is to do it.

The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to
their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it
out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead,
said, "Such a one has lived," or "Such a one has ceased to live"
--[Plutarch, Life of Cicero, c. 22:]--for, provided there was any mention
of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of
consolation. And from them it is that we have borrowed our expression,
"The late Monsieur such and such a one."--["feu Monsieur un tel."]
Peradventure, as the saying is, the term we have lived is worth our
money. I was born betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon the
last day of February 1533, according to our computation, beginning the
year the 1st of January,--[This was in virtue of an ordinance of Charles
IX. in 1563.