dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing. Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere.[1] Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they when it were reason;[2] but are impatient of privateness,[3] even in age and sickness, which require the shadow;[4] like old townsmen that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn. Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions, to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report; when perhaps they find the contrary within.[5] For they are the first that find their own griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind. Illi mors grams incubat, qui notus nimis
- ↑ Since you are not what you were, there is no reason why you should wish to live. M. Tullii Ciceronis Epistolarum ad Familiares Liber VII. iii. (Ad Marium).
- ↑ Reason. Reasonable; the idiom is French, and was frequent in English from about 1400 to 1650, though now rare. "And the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables." Acts vi. 2.
- ↑ Privateness. Privacy, retirement.
- ↑ Shadow. Shade, retirement.
"Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in business to the last."
Pope. Epistle I. 11. 228-229.
- ↑ "He who looks for applause from without has all his happiness in another's keeping." Oliver Goldsmith. The Good-natured Man. v.
