I was once foolish enough to bustle abroad, seek advancement everywhere, exhaust myself and trouble all my friends. “But all that labour achieved nothing. For while death calls away some of my friends, to others I am unknown, to others unwelcome. Some promise generously; others anxiously intercede with me; others feed me empty hopes. While I solicit some, court others and make myself known to others, my life slips away, the years flow past, my friends grow weary, I am abandoned; and now, tired of the world and sated with human faithlessness, I settle down.”

And I still say so, although I cannot deny that I have had generous patrons and noble benefactors—“lest I meanwhile prove ungrateful”—and I thankfully acknowledge it. I have received some kindness—“may God repay them for that benefit”—“if not according to my wishes, perhaps according to my merits”: perhaps more than I deserve, though less than I desire; more from them than I expected, yet less from others than I deserved. All this while I am neither ambitious nor greedy, nor a Suffenus in my own estimation. What I have said shall stand, without qualification or alteration.

And now, like a horse stuck in the mud, which at first struggles with all its strength to get out but lies still when it sees there is no remedy and its flailing will do no good, I have laboured in vain and rest content; and, if I may borrow those words of Prudentius:

I have found harbour; hope and fortune, farewell. I have nothing more to do with you; make sport of others now.

My haven is found; fortune and hope, farewell. Mock others now, for I have done with you.