ns from the vse of
physicall meanes, or that at a hundred yeares of age 'tis either a
folly or a shame to vse meanes to liue longer, and yet I haue knowne
many send to mee for their seuerall troubles at a hundred yeares of
age, and this day a poore woeman being a hundred and three yeares
and a weeke old sent to mee to giue her some ease of the colick. The
_macrobii_ and long liuers which I haue knowne heere haue been of
the meaner and poorer sort of people. Tho. Parrot was butt a meane or
rather poore man. Your brother Thomas gaue two pence a weeke to John
More, a scauenger, who dyed in the hundred and second yeare of his
life; and 'twas taken the more notice of that the father of Sir John
Shawe, who marryed my Lady Killmorey, and liueth in London, I say that
his father, who had been a vintner, liued a hundred and two yeares, or
neere it, and dyed about a yeere agoe. God send us to number our dayes
and fitt ourselves for a better world.

JOHN MILTON

1608-1674

TO A CAMBRIDGE FRIEND

_The choice of a profession_

[1631-2.]

SIR,

Besides that in sundry other respects I must acknowledge me to profit
by you whenever we meet, you are often to me, and were yesterday
especially, as a good watchman to admonish that the hours of the night
pass on (for so I call my life, as yet obscure and unserviceable to
mankind), and that the day with me is at hand, wherein Christ commands
all to labour, while there is light. Which because I am persuaded you
do to no other purpose than out of a true desire that God should be
honoured in every one, I therefore think myself bound, though unasked,
to give you account, as oft as occasion is, of this my tardy moving,
according to the precept of my conscience, which I firmly trust is not
without God. Yet now I will not strain for any set apology, but only
refer myself to what my mind shall have at any time to declare herself
at her best ease.

But if you think, as you said, that too much love of learning is in
fault, and that I have given up myself to dream away my years in the
arms of studious retirement, like Endymion with the moon, as the tale
of Latmus goes; yet consider that if it were no more but the mere
love of learning--whether it proceed from a principle bad, good,
or natural--it could not have held out thus long against so strong
opposition on the other side of every kind. For, if it be bad, why
should not all the fond hopes that forward youth and vanity are fled