was seized as he was granting an extension of bail, his own [extension] of life having expired; and Caius Julius, a physician, while he was anointing a patient’s eyes, lo, death closed his own.[1] And, if I must bring myself in, a brother of mine, Captain St. Martin, twenty-three years of age, who had already given good proof of his worth, while playing at tennis received a blow from a ball which struck him just above the right ear, with no bruise or wound. He did not sit down or stop playing; but five or six hours later he died of a stroke of apoplexy caused by that blow. While such examples as these occur so frequently and familiarly before our eyes, is it possible that we can get rid of the thought of death, and that it should not every moment seem as if he may clutch us by the collar?[2] What does it matter, you will say, how that may be, so long as we give ourselves no trouble about it? I am of this opinion,[3] and in whatever manner one can find shelter from blows, were it in the skin of a calf, I am not the man to refuse it; for it suffices me to hold my course in ease; and the best way that I can play my cards, I use,[4] as little praiseworthy and exemplary it may be as you please.
Prætulerim … delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere et ringi.[5]
- ↑ Bebius and Caius Julius, as well as Cornelius Gallus (above), are found in a longer list given by Pliny, Natural History, VII, 53.
- ↑ This last clause well illustrates the difference between French and English usage in the matters of gender. In such impersonal expressions as “it seems,” where the neuter pronoun is always used in English, the French use the masculine pronoun: “il me semble.” Again, all nouns in French being either masculine or feminine, the pronoun always follows in gender the noun for which it stands; whereas in English we personify certain nouns as masculine or feminine according to no fixed rule. Mort (death) being feminine, the feminine pronoun elle is always used; while if we personify Death, we always speak of it as “he.”
- ↑ That is, that it does not matter. Compare Montaigne’s change of note in the later Essay, Book III, chap. 12
- ↑ Le meilleur jeu que je me puis donner, je le prens.
- ↑ I would rather appear foolish and feeble, provided that my weaknesses gave me pleasure, or, at least, that I were not aware of them, than be wise and uncomfortable. — Horace, Epistles, II, 2.126.
