which made Demosthenes vow, si vel ad tribunal, vel ad interitum duceretur: if to be a Judge, or to be condemned, were put to his choice, he would be condemned. Rich men are in the same predicament: what their pains are, stulti nesciunt, ipsi sentiunt: they feel, fooles perceive not, as I shall prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like childrens rattles: they come and go, there is no certainty in them; those whom they elevate, they do as suddenly depress, and leave in a vale of misery.

The middle sort of men are as so many asses to bear burdens; or if they be free, and live at ease, they spend themselves, and consume their bodies and fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, &c. The poor I reserve for another place, and their discontents. For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there’s no content or security in any; On what course will you pitch, how resolve?

To be a Divine ’tis contemptible in the worlds esteem: To be a Lawyer ’tis to be a wrangler: To be a Physician, pudet lotii, ’tis loathed: A Philosopher, a mad man: an Alchymist, a begger: a Poet, esurit, an hungry Jack: A Musitian, a player: A School-master, a drudge: An Husband-man, an Emmet: A Merchant, his gains are uncertaine: A Mechanitian, base: A Chyrurgian, fulsome.

A Trades-man, a lyar: A Taylor, a Thief: A Serving-man, a slave: A Souldier, a butcher: A Smith, or a Metalman, the pot’s never from’s nose: A Courtier, a parasite: as he could finde no tree in the wood to hang himself, I can shew no state of life to give content. The like you may say of all ages: children live in a perpetual slavery, still under that tyrannical government of Masters: young men, and of riper years, subject to labor, and a thousand cares of the world; to treachery, falshood, and cosenage,

Incedit per ignes, Suppositos cineri doloso,

old are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions, silicernia, dull of hearing, weak sighted, hoary, wrinkled, harsh, so much altered as that they cannot know their own face in a glass, a burden to themselves and others, after 70. years, all is sorrow (as David hath it) they do not live but linger. If they be sound, they fear diseases; if sick, weary of their lives: Non est vivere, sed valere vita.

One complains of want, a second of servitude, another of a secret or incurable disease: of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death of friends, shipwrack, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt, ingratitude, unkindness, scoffes, flouts, unfortunate mariage, single life, too many children, no children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill success, &c.

Talia de genere hoc adeo sunt multa, loquacem ut Delassare valent Fabium.

Talking Fabius will be tyred before he can tell half of them; they are the subject of whole Volumes, and shall (some of them) be more opportunely dilated elsewhere. In the meane time thus much I may say of them, that generally they crucifie the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies, (ossa atque pellis est totus, ita curis macet) they cause tempus fædum & squalidum, cumbersome dayes, ingrataque tempora, slow, dull, and heavy times;

make us howle, roar, and tear our haire, as Sorrow did in Cebes table, and groan for the very anguish of our souls. Our hearts faile us, as Davids did, Psal. 40.12. for innumerable troubles that compassed him; and we are ready to confess with Hezekiah, Isay 58.17. behold for felicity I had bitter grief: to weep with Heraclitus, to curse the day of our birth with Jeremy, 20.14. and our stars with Job:

to hold that axiome of Silenus, better never to have been born, and the best next of all, to dye quickly: or if we must live, to abandon the world, as Timon did, creep into caves and holes, as our Anchorites; cast all into the Sea, as Crates Thebanus: or as Theombrotus Ambrociato’s 400 auditors, precipitate our selves to be rid of these miseries.